


This Earthly Paradise

by GlassParade



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-19
Updated: 2012-06-11
Packaged: 2017-11-02 05:10:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 45,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/365339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlassParade/pseuds/GlassParade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Victorian England, Kurt Hummel is a struggling artist and contemporary of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, an organization of painters, poets, and critics who strive to turn the art establishment of England on its very head. His mentor, one Dante Gabriel Rossetti, has grown tired of Kurt's reluctance to grow as an artist, and so enter Blaine Anderson, an artists' model of Bohemian disposition and eye-catching good looks. Can he, using rather unorthodox methods, succeed where Rossetti has not?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

* * *

"Oh good, you're here, I want a favor." Dante Gabriel Rossetti, founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, poet, rake and painter, didn't even look up from his easel as the door to the greenhouse he used as a studio and home clattered open to admit his protégé, Kurt Hummel. The younger artist shot his teacher a poisonous glare.   
  
"Why hello, Master Hummel, lovely weather we're having, I hope you're in fine health." Kurt dragged his easel in and set it up in a fit of crashing and rattling. "Oh, yes indeed, Master Rossetti, I'm lovely and hope you are as well. Gabriel, you have the manners of a common pig, you do realize?"  
  
A peal of laughter from the corner and Rossetti's paramour Lizzie Siddal peered over her sketchbook at Kurt, green eyes twinkling like emeralds through her tumble of russet waves. "Oh, Kurt. When will you give up and accept Gabriel as he is? Better persons than you and I have tried, it's quite hopeless." In a swish of dusty blue velveteen skirts, she got up and bustled over to help Kurt, dropping a kiss on his cheek as she did. "I, however, was not raised in a barn, and so hello, Kurt, how do you do?"  
  
"Well indeed, Lizzie." He smiled in gratitude as he set down his sketchbook, sweeping off his hat and bowing low to her. "My thanks to you."  
  
"And you are welcome." She snatched up his sketchbook and danced away out of reach. "Now, I want to see what new things you've drawn!"  
  
"Lizzie!" Kurt chased her around the studio, dodging battered chairs and dying plants. "That's private! I'm not done!" But she remained just out of reach, laughing tauntingly as she brandished his book at him. Kurt sighed. Truly, he did not wish her to look in it. “Elizabeth, please.”  
  
The girl stopped, flipping through the pages. But as she went on, an increasing sadness darkened her face. "Oh, Kurt."  
  
He looked down, scuffing the dusty floor with his worn boots. "I know." And he did. He knew that Lizzie was seeing that once again, Kurt had filled a sketchbook with still lifes and small animals. No human figures, not even statues. Not even children. "I am trying, Lizzie. In my head. I really think I'm getting there."  
  
"But that's nothing if it's not on paper. Gabriel," Lizzie turned to her lover, holding out the sketchbook, a beseeching look on her face. "Tell him."  
  
Rossetti didn't pause in his painting. He dabbed alizarin, lapis, and mustard colored oil paints onto his canvas, occasionally stepping back to look at it while dragging a paint splattered hand through his unruly black curls. "I still want a favor."  
  
Kurt sighed, tugging his sketchbook out of Lizzie's hands. "I'm not getting a lesson today, am I?" He cursed having dragged his easel here. Honestly, he'd known better long before he packed up and hauled it across London, for Rossetti was not the most reliable of teachers. And yet his style was the one Kurt most wished to emulate, and so he lived forever in the hope of getting proper tutelage at some point.   
  
"'Course you are. " Rossetti set down his palette, beaming in such a charming manner that Kurt was immediately suspicious and exchanged a glance of trepidation with Lizzie. "You're getting a lesson on how to make Maniac pay up when he owes money."  
  
"Maniac!" Kurt groaned, slumping into a chair. Lizzie patted him on the shoulder in sympathy. William Holman Hunt was Rossetti's notoriously temperamental colleague and Brotherhood co-founder. He was moody on the best of days, and his nickname wasn't 'Maniac' for nothing.   
  
"Gabriel, " Lizzie admonished, reproach clear in her gentle voice. "That isn't appropriate. Poor Kurt is your student, not your servant. Get your money yourself."  
  
"I've tried! Hunt doesn't listen to me anymore. Just says, 'Soon, soon' and then glares at me and I'm sorry, I don't care to be beaten to death in a fit of Maniac's rage." Rossetti waved a hand in Kurt's general direction. "Hummel looks like an angelic street urchin, Hunt won't lay a finger on him, and he might even hand over my money."  
  
Lizzie rolled her eyes. "I can go get it."  
  
"No, I don't trust him not to coerce you into modeling for him." Rossetti was possessive of his lovely young lady fair, who had been the subject of a rather impressive argument between Hunt, Rossetti, and their friend John Millais when the three artists had first made acquaintance with the pretty redhead. "He's still mad that I won."  
  
"He thinks you cheated by tumbling me into your bed," was Lizzie's cheerful retort. "And I am quite capable of saying no to Hunt, Gabriel."  
  
Kurt shoved himself to his feet. "Oh, never mind it, Lizzie, I'll go. It can't take long, perhaps there will still be enough light to get in a proper art lesson upon my return." Picking up his battered hat, the young man trudged out the door of the makeshift studio, resignation in his very posture.   
  
When the door had shut behind him, Lizzie whirled on Gabriel. "You're an awful teacher," she remonstrated, stamping one delicately slippered foot. "Kurt pays you to help him with his art, and you well know he can ill-afford it. Yet you take his money and teach him nothing."  
  
"I can do nothing as long as he refuses to draw the human form, Lizzie." With an air of deeply irritating calm, Rossetti picked his palette back up and resumed painting. "He paints lovely pears and apples and cats, I can't help him improve on that and no one wants such prosaic frippery at any rate."  
  
Lizzie stamped her foot again, this time right on Gabriel's own stockinged foot. In full temper, she ignored his howl of agony. "Then help him get over his reluctance! Forcing him to run your errands isn't helping at all!"  
  
Bent over to rub at his abused foot, Rossetti tilted his head up to peer at Lizzie through the tangle of his dark hair. "Oh? And how came you to draw that conclusion?"  
  
"I..." But she paused, mouth open and finger raised to chide him. Slowly, as realization dawned over her lovely features, Lizzie put her hand down. "Gabriel, what are you up to?"  
  
He simply grinned, straightening up. "I shan't tell you now, in case it comes to nothing. I'll only say that if it plays out as I think it shall, then our young Master Hummel's virginal reticence will be quite the distant memory soon enough..."  


* * *

“Rossetti’s sent me to ask - ” Kurt skidded to a stop in the doorway of the grubby studio, eyes and jaw alike wide in his astonishment. Whatever he had expected when Rossetti sent him on his errand, it hadn't been what ultimately greeted him. “What the devil?”  
  
“I doubt that’s what he sent you to ask,” William Holman Hunt grunted as he sketched a rough outline in charcoal. He stepped back to eyeball the model before him, squinting. “Flex those back muscles a bit more,” he barked as he rubbed his thumbs over the paper to smudge the lines.  
  
The man on the posing platform obeyed, his well muscled back displayed to fine effect given that Hunt had draped him simply in a fur loincloth that hung from his slender hips. He cast a glance over his shoulder. “Like this, sir?”

 

The flash of his eyes held Kurt frozen in place, staring with no sense of decorum or manners. A single glimpse of them and they were burned into his memory forever, deep pools of molten amber or honey in sunlight, sparked with a hint of mischievous good humor. They were fringed with lush dark lashes, framed by heavy brows and a tumble of soft, dark spiraling curls.

 

He had the face of a fallen angel – no, of an angel that was  _falling_ , falling and unrepentant. Full lips curved in a slight smile as he caught Kurt's eye, stubble dusted his jaw, and his nose crinkled up a little at the bridge when he saw Kurt's blush.

 

Kurt was quite utterly lost right then, though he wasn't entirely sure what he was getting lost  _in._  
  
“If it were wrong, I’d have told you,” snapped Hunt, his sharp growl jolting Kurt out of his reverie. “Don’t speak, just listen, damn it all. Hummel, what the hell do you want?”  
  
An uncomfortable tightening in his breeches quite nearly led Kurt to reply,  _your model_  but instead he answered with, “And what are you calling this masterpiece, Hunt?”

 

It was a vain hope, but he'd rather thought if he engaged Hunt in conversation, his mood might soften and mellow enough for Kurt to lay out Rossetti's demand without fearing for his safety.   
  
Vain indeed. The painter didn’t even look away from his outline as he answered, wiping sweat from his forehead and streaking it with charcoal dust. “A Converted British Family Sheltering a Christian Missionary from the Persecution of the Druids,” he growled back, squinting again at his model.  
  
“God, that’s a hell of a name, isn’t it?” asked the half-naked man, inciting Hunt’s ire further. Kurt cringed in anticipation of the explosion. This wasn't going well.  
  
“Shut up, or I’ll dismiss you and there’ll be no pay for you!” The charcoal stick in his hand scratched across the paper tacked to his easel. "Hummel, either you stop looking like a dim witted child and spit out Rossetti's demands or I throw you out. Choose now, and for God's sake choose wisely. I warn you I'm in enough of a temper as it is."

 

There was to be nothing for it. He was going to have to get right into it, with Maniac in full fine form and a perfect stranger in the room.   
  
"Ah, well, it's...ah...it..." Kurt flailed about for the right words, uncertain of the propriety of demanding money from Hunt in front of a model. It seemed impolite, somehow. Downright rude, actually. And yet well did he know that Rossetti would have no compunctions with doing so.   
  
Well. Rossetti  _had_  said this was to be a lesson in and of itself, had he not?  
  
Taking a deep breath and drawing himself up to stand tall and straight, Kurt opened his mouth. "It's regarding the money you owe Master Rossetti, sir. He's sent me to...to...coll..." He trailed off as Hunt's face empurpled with rage, his eyes alight with a mad furious fire. "Eeeep."  
  
"Get out!" Hunt roared, throwing down his charcoal stick so that it shattered on the worn wooden floorboards. He advanced snarling, his massive coal-smudged hands curled into fists that frightened Kurt quite out of his wits - and possibly several years of his young life. " _Out_! How dare you - I am working - tell Rossetti to do his own dirty work, damn your eyes!"

 

That had gone just about as well as he'd thought it might.  
  
"Yes, sir, apologies, Master Hunt," Kurt gabbled as he backed out the door, not willing to take his eyes off of the enraged painter for even one moment. So much for a lesson, all he'd gotten out of this was the fright of his life and the need for a stiff drink.   
  
Not to mention one good look at an unsettlingly handsome model with eyes like honey, who watched Kurt as he left, a light of interest and amusement in his eyes.   


* * *

  
There was an untidy little pub off of Shaftesbury that the Brotherhood frequented, and it was here that Kurt ducked in order to fetch up a drink and soothe his ruffled feathers before returning to Rossetti's studio. In the state he was in now, an encounter with his contrary mentor could well prove to spell the end of his hopes for a career in art.   
  
Or life at all, depending on just how badly it went. Rossetti liked to fight dirty.   
  
"One pint of stout," he told Miss Pierce, the pretty barmaid. It was just about all he could afford if he wanted to eat later - not to mention it was best to keep orders simple when the flighty blonde was working. She had been known to take an order for three rum hots, a sugared wine, and two pints of bitters, only to return with an empty birdcage, two turnip pasties, and a saltcellar.   
  
"I'll have the same." A battered black slouch hat hit the bar next to Kurt, making him jump and turn in surprise. He was shocked speechless to see Hunt's extraordinary model standing next to him, a rueful grin on his handsome face. "Hello, Master Hummel - it  _is_  Hummel, isn't it?"  
  
"I...it...yes?" At a quirk of Blaine's amused eyebrow, Kurt realized how stupid that must have sounded. "That is to say, yes, I'm Kurt Hummel."

 

“Excellent. I'm Blaine Anderson.” Still smiling, he stuck his hand out for a shake. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He waited patiently while Kurt stared dumbly at the hand. “Ah...I don't bite. Unless you wish me to do so.”

 

“Oh! Apologies!” Kurt took the extended hand, thrilling at the firm grip and the contact. “It is only that I am confused as to your presence. There's still light in the day, you oughtn't be done for hours.”

 

Blaine let out a rich chuckle, shaking his head down at the scuff-scarred wooden surface of the bar. “And yet here I am, Master Hummel, quite undeniably here, next to you.” He accepted his mug of stout from Miss Pierce with another charming grin and a handful of coins. “Hunt's fired me, you see.”

 

“Oh, no.” Kurt was stricken, then in the next instant horrified as something occurred to him. “Oh,  _no._ I do so hope it wasn't because of me.”

 

Blaine made a face. “Well. One...does not wish to point fingers, yet it does seem that his temper was rather shorter once you made your exit.”

 

It was the work of an instant for Kurt's face to burn hot with embarrassment. What had he done? Damn Rossetti and his cowardice. “I'm sorry. I really am quite incredibly sorry.”

 

“I believe his exact words were, 'He's utterly ruined my concentration, an entire day gone, ugh, you! Get out! And don't come back, you talk too much.'” Letting out a rueful chuckle, Blaine took a long draw off his stout before seeming to notice Kurt's horror and guilt. “Now it's my turn to apologize. I don't mean to make you feel badly. Honestly, it seems to have been a combination of many factors.”

 

“Mani – I mean, Master Hunt does have something of a reputation for his temper.” Kurt tried to seek a positive possibility from all of this. “He doesn't like to switch models in the middle of a project. Perhaps in a few days he might apologize and rehire you?”

 

Blaine glanced at him, skepticism clear on his ridiculously handsome face. “William Holman Hunt, apologize to a mere artist's model?”

 

“No. Of course. Silly of me.” Kurt stared into his mug of stout as if it could rescue him from his own idiocy. Why would the earth not open up and swallow him whole? Most inconvenient. “Again, I apologize.”

 

With a shrug, Blaine tipped up his mug for another long drink, and Kurt found himself fascinated at how his throat worked when he swallowed, how his Adam's apple bobbed above his starched collar, how the slightly sun-darkened skin of his throat was dappled with dark stubble. So absorbed was he that he nearly leapt out of his skin when Blaine spoke again. “'Tis no worry, Master Hummel. In truth I had rather expected it for some time. Master Hunt was difficult from the start.” His mug now empty, he set it back down on the bar and shoved it aside. “I shall simply have to hang my notice at the Academy once again and hope to find work soon. My landlady grows agitated lately. I am...” Now, for the first time, he blushed. “I am a bit behind in the rent, you see.”

 

Now Kurt felt even worse over his part in Blaine's dismissal. “Truly, Master Anderson -”

 

“No, please, think nothing of it.” Tossing a few more coins down, Blaine stepped back and smiled, clapping a hearty hand on Kurt's shoulder. “As I said, I had quite expected it...still. You may be able to assist me.” A speculative expression crossed his face. “Keep an ear out, if you will? If anyone should require a male model for their work, you may tell them of me.” He dug a battered little case out of his frockcoat pocket and extracted a calling card.  _Blaine Anderson_ , it read in simple typeface, going on to provide an address in Cheapside.

 

Kurt blinked at the card for a moment before shaking his head to clear it. He took the card in hand and looked at Blaine, feeling his cheeks still slightly warm at making eye contact. “Indeed. It's the least I could do.” He knew Blaine was poised to leave, but Kurt felt a need to keep him just a little longer. “Perhaps...perhaps I might run into you again sometime?”

 

“I should like that. I should like it very much.” With another bright smile like the sun, Blaine nodded and retrieved his hat, plopping it atop his head of messy curls. “A good day to you, Master Hummel.”

 

“Good day,” Kurt echoed, considerably more faintly as he watched Blaine depart. He felt as if someone had come up to him, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, shaken him quite hard and dumped him upside down in a wholly unfamiliar place. Never in his young life had he ever been so discombobulated by another human being. Gazing down at the card in his hand once more, he committed the address upon it to memory and tucked it into his pocket.

 

Miss Pierce appeared at his side. “Another stout?”

 

“No...no...I think not.” He looked down at his mug, surprised to see that he'd finished it. It seemed that today was going to be a day of perpetual surprises for Kurt Hummel. Some more welcome than others.

 

_Some **much**_ _more welcome than others,_  he reflected, remembering the twin dimples at the base of Blaine's spine just as it disappeared under the low slung loincloth.

 

Oh, he was in quite a lot of trouble, wasn't he?


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rossetti gives Kurt ideas, but has Kurt the courage and wherewithal to go through with them?

Had it not been for the fact that Kurt had left his easel and sketchbook at Rossetti's, he'd not have gone back to the other artist's home. His first impulse was to wander dreamily back to his own little studio, to flop onto the mattress that served as his bed and to let his mind linger on dimpled skin and muscled back and honeyed eyes, on a voice warm with humor and promises of things Kurt Hummel knew next to nothing about.  
  
But he did not trust his mentor to not sell his belongings in order to finance some debauched evening at the pub or Cremorne Gardens, and so the time for dreaming had to be set aside for a few hours. Kurt sighed and set himself to trudging back to his mentor's little greenhouse home. If nothing else, studying under Rossetti certainly kept him well fit.  
  
He did allow thoughts of Blaine to wash through his brain as he wandered the streets of London, and that kept him quite pleasantly occupied on his stroll. He never noticed the odd stares or amused little smiles he was getting from passersby who boggled at the dreamy, besotted expression he had no idea was sprawled across his face. He was far too preoccupied wondering if Blaine's backside was just deliciously muscled as his back.  
  
Of course his brain completely shut down when he tried actually imagine what had been hidden by the loincloth. Which is exactly why he'd never been able to truly immerse himself in drawing the human figure. He simply could not approach it with any objectivity whatsoever. Art lessons had been spent in fits of blushing and idiotic giggles whenever a nude model had been brought in. It had been a miracle that he had gotten out of the Academy at all given that his figure drawing had been done with as little looking at the model as possible. 

 

As soon as he had completed his course, he'd abandoned the human figure altogether.  
  
It was a considerable problem and was what kept him living on the modest income from his deceased father's estate more than on his own funds. But that legacy was dwindling, it had never been large begin with, and so it was more imperative than ever that Kurt try to get past this block and fulfill the potential that had his instructors at the Academy both lauding his praises and wringing their hands. "You could be the next John Millais, if you'd only get past this, Master Hummel,” his figure instructor had despairingly informed him. "Yes, you could get by on the strength of your brilliant landscapes and objects. But it'd be by the skin of your teeth, boy. If you have any hope at all of truly establishing yourself as an artist, you've got to paint _people_."  
  
As he trod on, his thoughts melted away from Blaine and down into a nasty little puddle of doubt and rage. He stomped through the door of the greenhouse and threw himself into one of the rickety wicker chairs without even looking at his friends, who could have been engaged in full-on coupling for all the notice he paid them.

 

Lizzie and Gabriel exchanged significant glances over the easel that separated them, having one of their frequent silent conversations. In the end, Lizzie spoke first, hesitantly, while waving at Rossetti to keep his mouth shut. "Kurt?"

  
Snatching his hat off, Kurt sent it flying into a clump of dead rhododendrons, scattering dry brown petals everywhere. "I can't even imagine what he might look like entirely naked!”  
  
What sounded like the beginning of a guffaw from Rossetti shifted into a strangled howl of agony when Lizzie kicked him in the shin. With a last pointed glare at her whimpering lover, she picked her way across the studio to kneel next to Kurt, taking his hand. "I think,” she began, quite diplomatically, "that perhaps you'd like to either rephrase or explain that. "  
  
Realizing precisely what he'd just said, Kurt groaned and buried his burning face in his hands. "No, thank you,” came his muffled reply, thick with mortification.  
  
Gabriel left off from inspecting his bruising leg and came to stand on Kurt's other side, well out of Lizzie's reach. "Have you my money, at least?” he inquired hopefully.  
  
"No, I haven't your money,” Kurt spat, lifting his head to deliver an icy glare upon his mentor. "Hunt threatened my safety and threw me out on my ear. Oh, and fired his model, no thanks to you. "  
  
"Oh, he had a model there? How interesting." Rossetti's innocent tone was overly put on, but Kurt in his dismay took no heed.  
  
" _Had_ being exactly the word. Hunt was so angry with me and your request that he dismissed the poor fellow as soon as I left." Kurt sighed, his shoulders slumping in his guilt. “I feel awful and it's all your fault.”

 

Lizzie's fine brow was furrowed in thought. “But if you'd left, how did you come to know he'd been fired?”

 

“We...I went...the pub. I needed a drink. He came in there, too.” Kurt felt the blush creeping up his face again and willed it to recede to no avail. “We spoke.”

 

Rossetti arched one eyebrow, his mouth tipped up in a smirk. “Why, Hummel, how you do blush. See something you like, did you?”

 

“No, I don't know, of course not, lovely weather isn't it?” Sense and sensible speech deserted Kurt all at once, to his utter horror, which only grew as Rossetti's smirk broadened. “My walk back was really quite invigorating,” he babbled, casting his gaze at the dirty windows, the leaf-scattered floor, the rumpled blue folds of Lizzie's skirts, anywhere but directly at either of his friends.

 

Lizzie twined her arms sinuously around Kurt's neck, cuddling close to coo in his ear, in that throaty voice of hers that made everything sound highly suggestive. “I think that you did see something you liked. Or is it some _one_? Tell.”

 

“I don't know what you mean,” he sputtered, drawing himself to sit up very straight and trying to gently disentangle himself. “Not at all.”

 

“Filth and lies,” Rossetti retorted happily, hands in his pockets as he began to pace the miniscule width of his home. “I know _exactly_ what you saw, it's what I sent you there for. And you _did_ like it.”

 

Kurt was reduced to stammers and more indignant sputtering. “What – I don't – you what?”

 

“I sent you over to take a gander at young Master Anderson,” Rossetti informed him, a triumphant twinkle in his mad Italian eyes. “Rather thought you'd appreciate it – the view, that is to say. Fellow came to me to model a few weeks ago.”

 

“But of course Gabriel needs no male model at this time, and I'm still learning on fruit, so he sent him to Hunt.” With an impish grin, Lizzie plucked an apple from her bowl in the corner and bit into it. “So that's what you're up to, love! I understand now. It's brilliant, quite perfect.”

 

“I have yet to understand what this has to do with me,” Kurt replied stiffly, tugging at his collar. Rossetti threw back his wild head of curls and laughed uproariously.

 

“Because you are a pouf and a virgin,” he answered when he'd finally calmed enough to do so. “And I rather thought you might like to meet another pouf, so that you had a chance to no longer be a virgin.”

 

“But I am not -” Kurt began to protest, only to be stopped by another raucous laughing fit from his mentor that sent the man flopping carelessly into a chair in order to catch his breath.

 

“We all _know_ , Hummel. We do not care, but we do all know.” Rossetti reached out and pulled a giggling Lizzie down onto his lap, holding her close. “And since you seem to be rather inept at finding other men of your persuasion, I thought I'd help.”

 

Crossing his arms, Kurt glared at the brightly smiling couple. “I might not need help. I might simply wish to concentrate on my art.”

 

“And I might be crowned King of England tomorrow with darling Lizzie as my consort, but I think that's highly unlikely, don't you?” He tickled Lizzie until she pealed out a burst of musical laughter, then turned a hard gaze on Kurt. “I'm being _kind_ , Hummel. It doesn't happen often. I suggest you take full advantage of the opportunity.”

 

“You're supposed to be teaching me art,” Kurt mumbled in protest, unable to deny that he found the idea of getting to know Blaine better to be a deeply appealing one. “Not soliciting me to -”

 

“I can do nothing more with your art until you remove the stick lodged up your arse and replace it with something that might make you altogether a more delightful person,” was his mentor's horrifyingly crude reply. “Until you can look at a naked person without tittering like a schoolgirl, your art will remain stagnant, withered, a dull puddle of affectless banality with as much life as the leaves that carpet this floor upon which we step.” Rossetti blinked and reached for his journal. “Oh, that's good, I must write that down.”

 

Kurt felt as though the very ground were quaking beneath his ancient boots. “Let us assume for argument's sake that you are correct about me,” he prevaricated, nose and chin held pointedly aloft. “ _If_ that were the case, I wonder how you would suggest that I go about getting to know this man?”

 

“ _If_ that were the case,” mocked Gabriel, not looking up from where he was scribbling his scathing assessment of Kurt's art, “and were I you, I'd hire him as a model, you enormous pillock.” He glanced up and at one look at Kurt's dumbstruck face, laughed himself silly. “Had you actually forgotten that you are a painter and therefore have a legitimate reason to spend all the time you wish with this man?”

 

Lizzie slipped out of Rossetti's lap and back over to Kurt, hugging him close. “You might consider him for that painting of Apollo you've been yearning to do for so long,” she suggested sweetly, blinking her wide green eyes in her earnest desire to help. “He'd not even have to wear much.”

 

“Nor indeed anything at all, Lizzie, it's perfect!” Gabriel rocked back in his chair, thoroughly delighted. “Oh, Hummel, now you simply _must_ do this, we've all but trussed the man up like a Christmas goose and dropped him right in your lap.”

 

But Kurt couldn't shake his concerns. “You've pointed out yourself that I'm just useless around naked humans, how is this to help?”

 

“Practice makes perfect,” was his mentor's casual reply. “You shall just have to engage his services until you get it right. Over...and over...and over.” With a salacious wink, he hopped to his feet and grabbed his hat, clapping it down on his head. “Until you get _all_ of it right. Now, since Lizzie and I have been really quite helpful today, you can stand us a round of drinks.”

 

Kurt sighed and checked his pocket, knowing already that he had only enough for dinner tonight. Now he'd go hungry. Ah, well. He wasn't unfamiliar with being a starving artist, and his friends  _were_ , in their own frankly bizarre ways, trying to be kind. “All right,” he acceded, getting to his feet and digging through the dead shrubbery for his own hat. Pulling it down over his eyes, he led the procession out the door. But as Gabriel locked up, a last thought occurred to Kurt. “Rossetti – Gabriel – how do you know that Anderson is...is...as you think that I am?”

 

The artist turned and slung his arms over Kurt and Lizzie's shoulders. “Don't you know, Hummel?” he asked with a mischievous wink. “I'm simply that good.”

 

* * *

_Rossetti is simply a bad influence,_ Kurt muttered to himself, squinting against the weak sunlight that was assaulting his eyes. He'd been up much too late with Rossetti, Hunt, Millais and Lizzie, all of them drinking their weight in wine and cider with not enough food consumed to temper the next day's ill-effects. And now he was in Cheapside, standing in front of the rotting door in the decrepit building that Blaine Anderson's card had listed as his address.

 

Surely this couldn't be right. Kurt stepped back and checked the number, grimacing in pain as his aching head protested having to concentrate. No, the number matched what had been printed on the card. But why would anyone live here? It was the next step up from a hovel, and Kurt only thought  _that_ highly of it because it was a two story building, and hovels, to his mind, weren't often multi-story buildings.

 

And Blaine seemed somehow a bit too genteel, well-born, to live here, though Kurt couldn't really have articulated why he thought that of the model.

 

At any rate, he hadn't entirely made up his mind what to do in regards to Blaine, several mile walk across London to get here aside. Rossetti and Lizzie's idea to hire Blaine to model would have been an inspired one for anyone but Kurt, who still wasn't entirely certain he was ready to acknowledge that he preferred the company of men, let alone prepared to seduce one. 

 

But then, he had made this long walk, wine-sick and admittedly still a touch tipsy from the night's debaucheries, so he supposed that really, he had in fact made up his mind, it was merely courage he lacked.

 

The decision to stay or flee was taken out of his hands when the door before him opened and Blaine Anderson himself bowled Kurt over in his haste to get out. “Oh! Ouch! Master Hummel!”

 

“I'm so sorry,” Kurt blurted, automatically reaching to straighten the other man's hat, which had been knocked quite askew in the collision. “I shouldn't have been standing there like an idiot.”

 

“I shouldn't have been in quite so much of a hurry,” Blaine replied good-naturedly. “I do usually take care not to run over others.” He looked curious, tilting his head to regard Kurt. “But what do you here? I don't think you're native to Cheapside...though it is quite nice to see you again, and so soon.”

 

“I...” A lump abruptly rose in his throat, making it difficult to speak. Kurt swallowed it down and took a deep breath. People hired models all the time. It was fine. He could do this. “I thought...well, as you'd been fired by Hunt...”

 

“Yes, I was just heading to the Academy to put my name back on the models' list,” Blaine agreed, nodding and waiting for Kurt to go on.

 

“Oh.” Disconcerted, Kurt struggled to grasp any semblance of composure. “I thought...perhaps...that is to say...I'm doing a painting, and wondered...”

 

“Should I like to pose for you?” Blaine's wide hazel eyes lit up with delight. “Why, yes indeed, I should! When would you...oh.” He paused upon seeing Kurt's bewildered expression. “Unless that's not at all what you meant. Oh, dear.”

 

“No! It is!” Shaking his head, Kurt hastened to reassure. “It is. I was just surprised that you seem so eager.”

 

Blaine winked. “I assume that you would be paying me. I am not exactly in a position to turn down funds.”

 

“Oh! Oh. Of course.” He nodded, patting through his pockets. “I fear I am a bit short at present, but I have a bit of money coming in by the end of the week, and shall be glad to pay you then. If you don't mind waiting.”

 

“Not at all. Master Hunt has sent word that he intends to pay me tomorrow, so I'll have a bit of something to see me through until you're able to pay.” Blaine's smile was lovely and warm, his eyes soft with good nature. “When would you like me to begin?”

 

“Ah, immediately, if you've the time. I thought...I thought I could explain what I had in mind as we walked to my studio?”

 

“Of course. Shall we, then?” Blaine gestured for Kurt to begin walking and fell easily into step beside him. “So you have your own studio as well?”

 

Kurt shrugged, a touch self-conscious. “It serves as both home and studio. A necessary economy...” He felt his face burn with embarrassment.

 

“Nothing to be ashamed of. You've seen where I make my home.” Blaine's elbow nudged at Kurt, making him look over to see that the model was still smiling kindly. “Men in professions such as ours, who make not very much money at all, must do what is needed in order to ensure that they may be allowed to create the art they love.” He tipped his hat. “I should much rather live as a model in the most abject poverty than as an accountant or barrister in comfort. 'Tis better to feed the soul and mind with art than to kill it with the mundane.”

 

Blaine's articulate speech was possibly the most beautifully worded thing Kurt had ever heard. They were words that wrapped around his heart, that lit his conscience with artistic conviction. “You are so well spoken,” he murmured, casting his glance to the pavement upon which they walked so that Blaine could not readily see how his cheeks reddened in a pleased blush. “It's refreshing.”

 

“I...I enjoy reading.” At the slightly strangled tone to the model's voice, Kurt glanced back up in surprise to see him looking distinctly awkward and no little red himself. “You ought to tell me what you've in mind for me to do, I think.”

 

“Of course,” Kurt replied, feeling slightly mystified. “I wonder if you are familiar with the myth of Apollo?”

 

But confusion vanished as they fell to strolling and chatting in earnest, the lively discussion of Greek mythology keeping them well occupied until they arrived at the building which housed Kurt's studio. “But I wonder,” Blaine was saying as Kurt unlocked the door, “if you have ever truly considered the story of Icarus? It could be quite the compelling subject, I should think.”

 

“Unless you sprout wings, I think I shall have to put it off,” Kurt replied wryly, ushering the other man inside. “I cannot afford to construct such elaborate appendages as would be required! But if ' _Apollo and his Lyre_ ' does well, we might consider another collaboration.”

 

“Ah, yes. I get ahead of myself.” Blaine glanced around the sparsely furnished studio with eyes that clearly didn't see the dust or peeling wallpaper or the grimy glass shades of the oil lamps. He smiled broadly as he took in the light streaming through the windows, the high ceilings, the fireplace. “Oh, look at this space! All of this light, my word. You are quite spoiled as an artist, I think.”  
  
Kurt felt a tight smile purse his lips. “Yes, well, that's fairly accurate. I hardly make suitable use of it...” He trailed off, focusing on his scuffed boots and shaking his head. “Never mind.”

 

“Well, that's why I am here, is it not?” Blaine shrugged off his coat and placed it and his hat across the table in the nearby corner. “We did not discuss how I should pose, though. I assume you had something in mind?”

 

And now the ease that had punctuated their conversation quite deserted Kurt as he remembered precisely why they were here, and the most important part of Rossetti's idea. Blaine posing naked. His mouth d ried entirely up. “Ah,” he croaked, his fingers flexing agitatedly into fists at his sides.

 

“You seem tense.” Blaine unbuttoned his sleeves and rolled them back, moving to help divest Kurt of his own coat and hat. “Relax! We are about to embark on a grand artistic endeavor! You should embrace it.”

 

_Embracing is one thing I wish to do involving you, yes,_ Kurt thought, and swallowed back the hysterical giggle that filled his throat. “I...it is only..I'm not sure...”

 

Blaine's hands came to his shoulders, squeezing and massaging in an attempt to ease the tension there. “You need only ask. I am a model, it is inherent in my job to take an artist's orders, if he will give them.”

 

“Naked,” Kurt blurted without thinking. “I should require that you be naked.”

 

The hands on his shoulders stilled, and silence reigned for some time. Kurt closed his eyes as his fair skin flamed crimson yet again. Oh, God, why was he quite incapable of speaking with the same articulation and decorum that marked Blaine's speech? Blaine would have undoubtedly found some more genteel and mannerly way to make the same request, were he in Kurt's shoes.

 

At once, the hands fell away and Kurt felt bereft, saddened. He'd driven the man away with his crudeness, he was quite sure. Damn it. All the planning and plotting in the world couldn't save Kurt Hummel from his own clumsy self. He took a deep breath and opened his mouth to speak, his fists still curled into tight little balls. “Master Anderson, I -”

 

Bare feet shuffled across the studio floor, and Kurt heard the chair he kept by the fireplace hearth being scraped across the floorboards.

 

“If you'll only tell me which pose you should like me to take,” came the quiet murmur, and Kurt opened his eyes to quite an extraordinary sight.

 

Seeing Blaine draped in a fur loincloth in the dusty near-squalor of Hunt's studio hadn't prepared Kurt at all for the sight of him in nothing at all in Kurt's own studio. He was lean, yet well muscled, with light dustings of dark hair on his tight thighs and calves and chest. His skin was the light caramel color of tea with just a touch too much milk in it, and there were no blemishes to it, save for a small patch of birthmark on his shoulder that Kurt spotted when the man turned to shift the chair a little.

 

The curve of his biceps invited Kurt to suck and bite at them, his lips to be kissed thoroughly, his tumble of dark curly hair to be pulled and tugged and dear God, to say nothing of his firm sculpted buttocks that were better than Kurt had ever even faintly imagined, and oh sweet Christ almighty the tangled thatch of coarse hair at his groin with the thick, unashamed hang of Blaine's cock there... “I...”

 

“Did you have any sort of vision for your _Apollo_?” Blaine's voice was calm, still quiet, his inquiry as polite as he was naked. “Was he standing, or...”

 

With a massive effort and a full-body shake to wake him from his stupor, Kurt drew up his head and picked his sketchbook and a stick of charcoal up from the table. “We can...we can try a variety of positions,” he suggested, holding back a groan as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Honestly, he did not have the slightest idea why he was permitted to speak to anyone whatsoever!

 

But Blaine quite kindly and mercifully allowed the innuendo to pass unnoticed. “I shall sit, then, to begin,” he replied simply, sprawling down across the chair he'd pulled over. 

 

_Dear God_ , Kurt marveled, having caught his second glimpse of the other man's cock. He thought it should frighten him, perhaps, but instead it only roused his not very latent desire, making him move behind his easel in an effort to conceal his erection. While he appreciated Blaine's efforts to act as though this were an everyday occurrence for them both, he found himself too tangled with desire to relax at all.

 

Still. He must pretend, at least. After all, he truly did hope to conquer his awkward reticence to draw the human form. He did hope to sketch and then paint a masterpiece that would establish him as the artist his teachers at the Academy thought he could be. There were practical considerations in all of this. They seemed rather insignificant next to the mouthwateringly delicious form of the nude man in his studio, but they did actually exist.

 

“Open your legs a bit wider and rest your arm across the back of the chair,” he ordered, mouth going dry as his eyes zeroed in on Blaine’s groin and the glorious treasure there that made Kurt’s breeches grow uncomfortably snug.  
  
Blaine obeyed, but glanced over at Kurt through his absurdly long lashes, hazel eyes going smoky as his mouth twitched up into a small smirk. “You know,” the model began conversationally, adjusting his hips and blatantly drawing Kurt’s attention even more firmly to his crotch, “I believe this might be more comfortable for me – for both of us, perhaps - if you were to disrobe as well. It’s only fair.”

 

Directing his eyes firmly to the sketchbook he was preparing to rest on his easel, Kurt could muster only a mumble. “You seem rather comfortable as it is. I think it...it is not required.”

 

“Are you certain?” Blaine's tone was playful, yet gentle. “I have often found that in situations where a person is uncomfortable, it helps to level the playing ground as much as possible. Therefore...” He trailed off, a friendly smile tilting up the corners of his rosy, full mouth. “I could either put my clothing back on, or you can strip down naked.”

 

Kurt forced himself to look up, to really see Blaine. To try and view him with artistic objectivity devoid of embarrassment, awkwardness, or sexual desire. To see him as nothing more than something to be drawn and then painted.

 

_I wonder what it might be like to actually paint him, to apply paint to his body with brushes and then with my fingers, to use his skin as a canvas so that he is a living representation of both my art and my desire -_

 

Oh, God, he could not do this.

 

“I'm sorry,” Kurt burst out, hurling the easel and sketchbook down to the floor as he bolted past to grab his coat and hat. “I cannot...you won't be...the painting is canceled...please, let yourself out. I must go.”

 

Not trusting himself to say or do more and in truth already embarrassed by his actions, Kurt turned on his heel and clattered out his door and down the stairs, the feeling of Blaine's bewilderment and consternation chasing him all the way out to the street.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lizzie has given Kurt a plan to follow, but what shall happen when Blaine Anderson takes matters into his own hands?

 

* * *

“Let me understand this,” Rossetti began, steepling his fingers before his face and staring over them at Kurt. “You ran away.”

 

Kurt slumped miserably in one of the greenhouse's less decrepit wicker chairs. “Yes.”

 

“But he was naked.” Clearly, Rossetti was having a very difficult time with this. His forehead was so tightly furrowed in thought that one could nearly plant an entire season's harvest in it. “He was naked, and he was inviting you to also remove your clo – ow, ow, damnation Lizzie, that is _actually painful_.”

 

Lizzie smartly released her pinching hold on Rossetti's ear, letting him sink back down into his battered wing chair. “I believe what Gabriel is trying to say in his usual uncouth mannerless way, is that he's not entirely sure why things went wrong, when they appeared to be going spectacularly well.” She fetched a cup of tea and brought it to the end table at Kurt's elbow. 

 

“He was _naked_ ,” Rossetti burst out, reaching out with his hands as if he wanted to wrap them around Kurt's throat and commence squeezing. “Naked, Hummel!”

 

“I am aware, Gabriel, yes, it wasn't exactly something I could miss, thank you!” Crossing his arms over his chest, Kurt slumped back into his chair after his outburst, ignoring the tea and allowing himself to slip into a full sulk. “I'm a virgin, I'm not an idiot.”

 

“I think that statement could be debated – _ouch_.” Rossetti glared up at Lizzie and rubbed the spot on the back of his head where she'd just smacked him. “You are a very mean woman!”

 

“And you are an insensitive buffoon,” Lizzie shot back. 

 

Kurt groaned and rubbed his forehead. “I am an inept virgin and a doomed artist.”

 

Rossetti rolled his eyes, selecting an apple from Lizzie's still life bowl and beginning to peel it with his pocketknife. “The power to be neither of those things lies strictly within you, Hummel.”

 

“Apparently not, since I am here with you and not in the company of an unfairly attractive naked man,” Kurt snapped back irritably. “Unless you've any actual helpful suggestions, I shall take my leave to go languish in my failure and consider a new career.” Snatching his hat up, he prepared to sweep out of the door of the greenhouse studio, only to be stopped in his tracks by Lizzie.

 

“Sit back down,” she ordered, fire sparking in her green eyes as she shoved at Kurt until he turned and stumbled back to his chair. Tossing her mane of auburn waves back over her shoulder, she leaned down and placed her hands on the arms of the chair and leveled a truly frightening glare on him. “Now, Kurt, you're quite intelligent most days, but right now you're being so deliberately obtuse I've half a mind to throttle you.”

 

“Please don't,” Kurt squeaked, cringing back in the chair. No one, not even the redoubtable Hunt, was completely without fear of Elizabeth Siddal. Her sweet disposition and generous nature were augmented by a fearsome Irish temper that was either bewitching or frightening, depending on whether or not it was focused on you. 

 

“You must _practice_ , Kurt. I realize that most of us dismiss half of what Gabriel says because he's often talking bollocks -”

 

“Excuse me,” sniffed the artist from his chair, sounding put out. Lizzie and Kurt ignored him.

 

“\- but that part was actually important. Only practice can make perfect, Kurt.” She snorted with a touch of light contempt. “If you wish to conquer both your artistic block and your...chastity...well, you cannot simply give up after a single pathetic attempt.”

 

“No, but I have been trying to overcome both for years, Lizzie,” Kurt protested. “You know that I have.”

 

“Idle, insincere stabs at the problem,” she replied dismissively, pushing herself upright and beginning to pace the tiny room. “This was your first real effort. And you cannot let the failure of it stop you.”

 

Kurt swallowed the lump of nerves that had risen in his throat. “But...”

 

“No, there shall be no 'but',” Lizzie interrupted, whirling to pin him down with a glare that was just as effective as if she had physically restrained him. “When Hunt rather misguidedly listened to John Ruskin and replaced me as his model – replaced me with a common _whore_ – I did not give up! I could not afford to do so. His idiocy did not defeat me, and now I am not only modeling for Gabriel and for John Millais, I am also studying art.”

 

He knew all of these things to be nothing but the truth.

 

Lizzie's expression softened. “You would not be happy doing anything other than painting and you know it,” she murmured, a gentle smile lighting her face. “You owe it to yourself to work until you have managed it.”

 

“This is all exactly what I told him,” Rossetti protested, aggrieved. But he, too, shrank back when Lizzie rounded on him.

 

“You gave him advice as if you were instructing yourself,” she pointed out with poisonous sweetness. “Which surely you realize was unhelpful, since poor Kurt was unsuccessful and besides _that -_ you are a pig.”

 

Gabriel glared, but shut up and went back to peeling his apple in a careful spiral of waxy red skin. Lizzie turned back to Kurt, her face kind but resolute. “You must apologize to Master Anderson,” she instructed gently. “I realize that this is embarrassing and that you artists do have your pride, but there is nothing else for it. You simply must, it is only right and courteous.”

 

It pained Kurt to even think about, to imagine facing Blaine after having humiliated himself so thoroughly, but he did know that he was the one in the wrong. “I cannot pretend that it did not happen,” he agreed with considerable misery.

 

“No. You cannot.” Fishing about in the pocket of her skirt, Lizzie pulled out a few coins and pressed them into Kurt's hand. “You must also buy him a drink.”

 

“I can't take your money, Lizzie,” he objected, scandalized.

 

She ignored him. “And you must offer to pay him for his wasted time and then you must hire him again.”

 

This was getting worse by the second. “Must I?”

 

“You must,” came the firm reply. “Kurt, this is not simply about manners and courtesy. This is your career. Your life.”

 

_'Tis better to feed the soul and mind with art than to kill it with the mundane._ Blaine's voice rang through Kurt's mind, the words reigniting the fire he had felt only hours ago, before his monumental humiliation. Heaving a sigh, Kurt knew that both Lizzie and Blaine were right. He would rather die than not paint, and he could not live as half an artist, crippled by excessive modesty and fear. “And of course, I know that you are right, as you always are.”

 

“At least _someone_ in this room besides myself understands that,” Lizzie declaimed archly, tossing her hair before dissolving in laughter that Kurt couldn't help but join in with, so infectious was her mirth and so relieved was he to receive actual sensible advice.

 

And yet still...“Ah...what about...the  _other_ ?” he asked in a whisper when they were both capable of speech again, the mere inquiry setting his cheeks aflame. Yet he did so want to conquer this as well, and he did find Blaine so very attractive...

 

His friend went rather red herself, but took a deep breath and gave it her very best effort. “I should think,” she began, clearly choosing her words with great care, “that once you attend to the one, then...the  _other_ may well follow. In a natural, organic order.”

 

“Do you truly think?” Kurt bit his lip, worried. “I don't even know what the natural order would _be_ , not really.”

 

Lizzie opened her mouth to attempt a reply, only to be interrupted. “Better hope Anderson at least knows what he's doing then,” Gabriel called from his chair, tossing his knife aside with a rattle before biting into his fruit. “Else the closest you shall ever come to a cock again is if you spend a night at a Devonshire chicken farm.”

 

Kurt decided now would be an excellent time to depart, lest he give in to the temptation to bludgeon Rossetti to death with one of the hideous stone cherubs littering the greenhouse studio. 

 

Some days – not many, but some – he really quite wished he'd been more drawn to Hunt's bright, stark colors or Millais' muted nature scenes than Rossetti's lush, fantastic medievalism. Both men came with their own burdens, but none were so heavy as the ribald sarcasm and bitingly abusive wit that were the cost of working with the mad Italian.

 

* * *

Kurt took several days to work up the courage to go and speak to Blaine, but in the end fair chance and providence utterly negated all of his hard work by the simple expedient of having the man literally run into him on the street.

 

“Master Hummel!” 

 

At Blaine's bright, cheery salutation, Kurt felt his cheeks flush a brilliant crimson. His eyelids fluttered shut as he came to a stop, flexing his fingers inside his gloves out of nervousness. As much as his first instinct was to run, he forced himself to stay still. If nothing else, Lizzie was correct – he did indeed owe the young model an apology for firing him and then running away from him.

 

Taking a deep breath, Kurt drew himself upright and forced himself to smile. “Master Anderson. Hello.”

 

“I'm so pleased to have caught you.” Blaine's hands moved forward to grasp Kurt's before he knew what was happening, shaking them with enthusiasm. “I've been hoping to see you for several days.”

 

“You are? You were? I mean...ah, well, of course I've been quite absorbed...” Kurt stammered, gently pulling his hands free with a blush. “But I too am glad to see you, of course, Master Anderson.” He took another fortifying deep breath and plunged in. “I've been wishing to extend to you an apology for my terrible behavior.”

 

“Oh, you needn't...” Blaine ducked his head and looked rather endearingly bashful. “Truly, worse things have happened to me, I am - ”

 

“I insist.” Kurt tilted his chin up, pride stiffening his spine. “I acted in a deplorable fashion and I cannot allow you to think that I do not regret it. I truly, truly do apologize.”

 

Blaine's smile grew ever more impossibly bright, like the sun in the sky on a clear spring day in the English countryside. “Well...if you insist.” He reached and grasped Kurt by the wrist, heat from his palm warming Kurt's skin even through his glove. “You may do so only if you consent to having a drink with me! Here, there's the pub there, let's go in and have a little something, shall we?”

 

Kurt allowed himself to be tugged inside the greasy little public house, to be seated in a booth across from Blaine. He hoped quite fervently that the light from the lamps hid his still burning face from the other man's scrutiny. “You will let me buy your drink, will you not?” he asked, seizing at Blaine's gloved hand to stop him going to the barmaid. “It is of course the least that I can do.”

 

“Absolutely not.” Blaine's tone was firm as he removed his hat and dropped it onto the seat. “I invited you in here. The first round of drinks is on me.” With a wink, he pulled his hand free and disappeared into the raucous crowd.

 

A sigh escaped from Kurt as he removed his own gloves and hat, placing them neatly on the table and hoping that the gaslight _wasn't_ hiding a puddle of beer or wine that he hadn't seen. He could ill-afford the drinks he intended to buy this night, let alone a new hat and gloves – though perhaps Lizzie might have some suggestions for him, if he had indeed spoiled his belongings.

 

So lost was he in his concerns for his clothing that he was startled when Blaine returned, plopping two mugs of hot buttered rum onto the table's surface. “I hope you don't mind that I took the liberty of selecting a drink for you,” he remarked, apology in his voice as he gazed at Kurt. “You didn't put in a special order, and I quite like this on a chill night such as this.”

 

“No, no, it's fine,” Kurt assured him, promptly taking a long draw on the sweet, warm drink. Its relaxing heat seemed to spread immediately through his body, making him feel cozy and a bit less tense. “Thank you. And again, I do wish to apologize -”

 

Blaine raised a hand to stop him, shaking his head. “Honestly, Master Hummel, it's quite fine. No need to apologize to me, I do understand.”

 

“You...you do?” Puzzled, Kurt tipped his head to the side to regard the other man, who simply continued to smile, warm and serene.

 

“Of course I do. Artists fire models all the time, do they not?” Blaine shrugged before resting his elbow on the table, leaning his chin into his upraised hand. “It's quite common. I am only sorry that my skills or appearance were found lacking for you as well, it's quite a blow to have been fired by yourself and Master Hunt in the space of a few days.” He sighed. “I thought I looked well enough, and kept still enough -”

 

Kurt clapped both hands over his mouth in his distress. “Oh, no, no, no! You mustn't think that at all!” He reached across without thinking, taking Blaine's warm, rough hand in his. “You were quite fine, fine indeed! 'Tis no shortcoming of yours at all, I assure you, Hunt is terribly difficult to please unless you're Annie Miller. And of course you kept quite still, looked quite fine...”

 

Blaine's eyes were warm in the gaslights, his lips curved upwards in a shy, sweet little smile. “Was I, then?”

 

“Yes. Oh, yes, you were...” The golden light of Blaine's eyes kept Kurt mesmerized for long, long moments, their molten glow a pool into which he felt he could fall forever. He did not even notice when his hand lingered too long on Blaine's, when his thumb began to stroke the back of it absently as he continued to ramble. He'd never been good at holding his drink if it were stronger than stout or ale, and already he felt the intoxicating effects of the rum trickling through his veins, warming him from the inside out.

 

He took another long, sweet sip and felt his inhibitions beginning to drop away like falling stars, loosening his tongue to spill his thoughts. “The play of the sunlight across your skin was...it was captivating. You are quite finely made, you know...better than the models we got to see at the Academy...no, it was no hardship to look upon you...”

 

Dark eyelashes swept down to brush high cheekbones, swept up again to allow those eyes to pin Kurt in their gaze. “Why, then? Why did you ask me to leave?”

 

“Because I want -” But Kurt's brain seemed to awaken then, to stutter to a stop as he understood what he had been about to divulge. He realized his hand was still holding Blaine's, was stroking it almost intimately in full view of anyone who cared to watch. A tiny gust of a gasp escaped him as he pulled back, grabbing at his nearly empty mug. “Oh! I am sorry.”

 

But Blaine's eyes were still warm and golden, still fixed on his and now darkening with thoughts Kurt couldn't begin to guess at. “You're quite tense,” he commented, sipping at his own drink. “And so nervous around me. You needn't be, you know. Is it simply that you are unaccustomed to looking upon a fully unclothed model? It seems odd, I had been given to understand that in the Academy such things were commonplace.”

 

The frankness in the inquiry had the effect of disarming Kurt nearly as neatly as the alcohol had done. “Well, yes, a bit, but, no, at the same time,” he stammered, finishing off his drink, the spark of equilibrium he'd achieved all gone once again. “It's difficult to explain...”

 

“Well, you can't be like this if you expect to make a living painting.” Blaine shook his head, one curl springing loose from the pomaded locks over his brow in his vehemence. “You do know that?”

 

Pride and temper caused Kurt to rear back from the table. “I do know that,” he sniffed, angry. “But if you're only going to negate my apology by pointing out my shortcomings, I -”

 

“Not at all.” Blaine reached across the table to press Kurt's hand down, stilling him as he had been preparing to stand. “By no means! In fact, I should like to help you with this, Master Hummel.”

 

“Help?” He stopped trying to pull his hand away, but still felt a little hurt and angry. “How can _you_ help me?”

 

Blaine shrugged lightly. “If you'll hire me again, I shall be altogether happy to explain.”

 

“Hire you...again?” Now Kurt was mildly confused at the turn the conversation had taken – hadn't he been he one who was supposed to suggest that? Why did things seem to be going out of order? And where had this second drink come from that was in his hand? “What do you -”

 

“I have a bit of a notion,” the model admitted, signaling the barmaid for another round of buttered rums. “It involves getting you a bit more tipsy, I'm afraid. Are you opposed?”

 

In the state Kurt was in, he would have found it difficult to oppose a  _mute_ , let alone the very charming and convincing Blaine Anderson. “No...”

 

“Finish that.” Blaine tipped his chin to point at the mug in Kurt's hand. “And then the next one. Then we shall go back to your studio. I've an idea.”

 

* * *

“I can't paint in lamp light,” Kurt giggled as Blaine went around his studio lighting the candles in the lanterns. “I need _sunlight_ in order to see you properly.”

 

“I've said nothing of you painting, Master Hummel,” Blaine replied, laughter in his voice. He moved to stock and start a fire in the fireplace. “I've also said nothing of you seeing me.”

 

Kurt slumped into a chair, pouting. Blaine had refused to explain anything at all on their tipsy, stumbling walk back to his studio home, saying only that he was sure his idea would be helpful, and all would be revealed in due time. It had been most frustrating. “I fail then to see how you shall help me, Mr. Anderson.”

 

“Blaine.” Fire started, Blaine came to tug Kurt back to his feet. “Please. If we are to work together, you may call me Blaine. And I've told you, all shall be revealed.”

 

“Fine,” Kurt huffed, allowing himself to be taken into Blaine's arms and guided to the far corner of the studio. “Then you must of course call me Kurt.” He frowned down at Blaine's arm where it encircled his waist. “You must also at least remove your coat, sir, we are indoors.”

 

“As you wish.” Blaine stepped back, keeping his eyes on Kurt as he unbuttoned his frock coat and tossed it aside. “You ought to remove yours as well. It will soon be quite warm in here.”

 

Kurt looked down at his own coat. “Oh.”

 

“Or I can assist you, if you like.” Blaine's arms were around him again, nimble fingers making quick work of the wooden buttons before drawing the coat away from his shoulders. “There.”

 

“There,” Kurt echoed, stretching as his body relaxed under the influence of the several buttered rums he'd had and the gradual warming of his studio. “Now. Take off your clothes.”

 

Blaine chuckled. “I find your assertiveness under the influence to be quite endearingly amusing.” He pressed a finger to Kurt's mouth, the brief touch burning like a brand on Kurt's lips. “Ah, no, Kurt. Not this night. My helping you will not begin with me removing my clothing in this room again, not at present at least.”

 

Petulance pushed Kurt's lower lip out even more than before. “Then how am I to learn to appreciate the unclothed male form?”

 

“By appreciating yours.” He reached out to hook a finger under one strap of Kurt's braces where they crossed over his shoulder, tugging the leather down and off until it hung from the waist of his trousers. A quick motion took care of the other side as well while Blaine continued speaking. “If you can see and appreciate yourself, perhaps then...perhaps then it will not be so taxing to look upon another?”

 

Blinking, Kurt considered and thought he was following Blaine's thoughts. And furthermore, he could see no reason to object. Everything was so pleasant and warm and Blaine was so very handsome. “That...that might...”

 

With no warning, Blaine moved to stand behind him, his hands coming up again to work at Kurt's embroidered waistcoat, pressing the buttons slowly through their holes until the garment hung open, loose, the brocade glowing in the dim light. The shirt was next, baring Kurt's pale skin one slip and sliver at a time until it, too, hung free, only its tail remaining tucked into his breeches. 

 

“Oh,” he breathed, completely fascinated. He watched Blaine's hands as they came to rest against his stomach, found himself captivated by the play of the firelight on his chest, the flicker of orange over the whiteness of his skin.

 

Indeed, it was quite a pleasing sight. Kurt brought his hand up to trace his fingers along the veins and knuckles of Blaine's, enjoying the contrast between their two skin tones, warm over cool.

 

“Like the finest marble,” came Blaine's whisper in his ear, rough and low and warm as the fire. “Or alabaster. See how you look.” His hands at Kurt's waist pressed tight to turn him around and face the battered, cracked cheval glass behind them. “See how you are an unknown god amongst us mere mortals.”

 

Kurt saw his hair tumbling over his brow, over eyes heavy-lidded from warmth and alcohol and the pleasurable sensuality of this moment. His skin was indeed pale, faint, the perfect canvas for the pink of his rosy blush, the orange-gold of the flames from the fire, the sun-brown of Blaine's hand as it rested on his torso. That hand began to move, then, as he watched, began to pull first the waistcoat away, then the loose linen shirt from his fawn breeches. Red lips pressed at his shoulder as the shirt was tugged off and discarded, leaving him bare-chested and relaxed against Blaine's solid, still clothed body. “You, now,” he mumbled, dropping his head back, feeling as if in a lovely dream.

 

“Not just in this moment,” Blaine reminded him. “Just now it is all about you coming to appreciate your own form, to look upon yourself and to see that it is good and right and beautiful.”

 

Still in a daze, Kurt watched as Blaine's hands moved slowly, with hesitation, to the buttons of his breeches. Mirror-Blaine's eyes looked up at Mirror-Kurt's face then, his teeth biting down on his lip. “Will you be all right,” that Blaine asked, gently, his hands stilling, “If I were to open these buttons?”

 

Kurt nodded, bobbing his head in all directions. “Yes, please,” he murmured, watching from under his heavy eyelids. He wrapped his arms back behind himself to open the view fully to himself as Blaine slowly undid the fastenings of his breeches, folding the fabric away to reveal the bulge just there, just hidden beneath one last layer of underclothing. 

 

They both stood then, frozen and watching themselves in the mirror, the only sounds the crackle of the fire and their hushed, ragged breathing. Kurt marveled at how he looked like one of the fallen angels that Rossetti liked to paint, debauched and mysterious and...oddly beautiful. How strange to think it of himself, to train his artist's eye on his own form and to appreciate what he could see.

 

Blaine broke the silence then, broke the stillness by taking Kurt's hand in his and guiding it beneath the waist of his undergarment, curling his own fingers around his cock as it rested there, causing it to stir and fill at the touch of their hands. “Take it out,” came the ragged whisper then, accompanied by a hard swallow. “Take it out, so that you may look upon it.”

 

For the first time, Kurt hesitated, though with difficulty. “No.” He shook his head, his hand stilling and resisting Blaine's attempt to coax it out. “No. I can't.” 

 

“How do you expect to draw me, to paint me, if you cannot even look at yourself?” Blaine's voice was soothing and reasonable. “Not just this part of yourself -” he ran his free hand over Kurt's upper body, allowing his fingers to ghost over the skin and dapple it with feather-light touches, “ - but also here, this, you at your most private. You must see it all, Kurt, to allow your eyes to rest upon it as though it were no more remarkable to do that than to look upon an egg.”

 

Kurt bowed his head, looking at where their hands were joined beneath the fabric of his underthings. “You do it,” he whispered, trying to withdraw his hand. But Blaine held him firmly in place, squeezing his fingers around the turgid warmth of his member.

 

“It must be you,” he murmured into Kurt's ear. “You must gather all of your courage and do this for yourself, Kurt.” He pulled back his hand, resting warm fingers along Kurt's hip. “Come, please, won't you show yourself to me? To yourself?”

 

Closing his eyes, Kurt breathed in deeply and raised his chin into the air even as his hand pulled his now fully erect cock from his breeches, letting the waist of his undergarment hold it stiff and warm against his stomach. Blaine's gasp made his eyes fly open in dismay. “Is it so very terrible?”

 

“Terrible?” Blaine was incredulous, his hands pressing into Kurt's chest and hip. “Dear God, no, Kurt, have you never properly gazed upon yourself with your artist's eye? Look!” He pointed to the cheval glass, to their reflection there with Kurt's manhood rudely on display, the head much redder than the rosy pinkness of what could be seen of the shaft. “Look at the color of it, see how it stands proud and tall and...oh...” He bit his lip. “Look at how magnificent it is.”

 

“But it does not look like yours,” Kurt protested, tilting his head and observing himself with a frown.

 

“And thank all the Gods of the pantheon for that,” Blaine remarked, slipping around to stand before him. “For if it did I should not be inclined to do this.”

 

Down to his knees he went, tugging away the trousers and undergarment as well. Bewildered and still quite, quite drunk, Kurt was trying to find the words to ask  _What are you doing_ when oh,  _oh_ , it became perfectly, marvelously, wondrously clear what Blaine was doing.

 

His lips had parted when his knees hit the ground, and his pointed pink tongue ran just once over them before he took Kurt's cock into his mouth. The heat of it was a shock, the heat and the wetness and the  _eagerness_ of Blaine's mouth as he began to suck at Kurt, his tongue swirling 'round shaft and head and all it could reach as his head bobbed.

 

Kurt's eyes were fixed on the cheval glass, watching in astonishment as the dark head of curls between his thighs shifted and nodded, each movement coinciding with a stripe of licking or sucking that took his breath away. Blaine's fingers were kneading into Kurt's buttocks, holding him upright and firm as he worked. The carnal tableau held Kurt transfixed, part of his brain wanting to to draw what he saw before him, the rest of it melting away under the heat of Blaine's ministrations.

 

He felt no shame, no embarrassment, only an endless fascination and rising excitement with each press of Blaine's fingers, each stroke of his mouth.

 

His hands began to creep forward, sinking into the silky softness of Blaine's hair and gripping tight as his hips began to shift of their own accord, thrusting himself into Blaine's mouth. Groans came, then, guttural and primal as they thrummed through the shaft of Kurt's erection, Blaine's lips vibrating with hums of pleasure. It added another dimension of delicious agony to the entire exercise, began to slowly unravel any threads of control Kurt had left to himself.

 

His reflection in the mirror was even more the debauched angel than ever, his head thrown back slightly, hair dark in the dim lamplight, lips slack and pink and failing utterly to keep back his own gasps of ecstasy. Blaine's dark head contrasted starkly with the pale white of Kurt's body, his brown hands standing out as they squeezed Kurt's skin. The scene was charged with eroticism and joy and was not shameful to look upon, but was, as Blaine had said earlier, good and right and beautiful, and he ached to see it, counted himself fortunate to be experiencing it.

 

Heat coiled at the base of Kurt's spine, his gasps and cries beginning to come faster as Blaine worked, hand now joining mouth in its task. Kurt's attention was ripped from the reflection in the mirror and pulled to watch Blaine – and their eyes met, Blaine's wide pools of golden lamplit desire holding steady to Kurt's face as he licked and sucked and pulled and then – that was the last, for Kurt, all composure gone at the sight of this beautiful man, this model he wanted so badly, to see him watch as Kurt came undone – no, wait – then -

 

His climax ripped through him, streaking up his spine and erupting with a rough howl torn from his throat. Kurt's fingers knotted hard in Blaine's hair and held him close and still as he eagerly swallowed down all that spurted from Kurt's cock, drinking it as if it were the finest ambrosia offered by the very gods themselves. His groans of pleasure did not abate, and indeed it seemed as he found as much excitement and joy in the giving of this as Kurt had discovered in the receiving.

 

Kurt's knees gave out then, dropping him to the floor like a stone. His head felt light and spun with rum and the euphoria of release, and before he could catch his ragged breath, Blaine's hands were on his face, his mouth ravaging Kurt's in a kiss that plundered and claimed and made promises of a sort that Kurt had never known but had a very great deal of interest in finding out more about.

 

When at last Blaine broke away, leaving the taste of rum and sex behind in Kurt's mouth, his eyes were still wide and dark, unreadable in their opacity. He simply cradled Kurt's face in his warm hands and pierced him with a gaze that sought to know his most private thoughts.

 

Pinned and mesmerized by the deepened honey shade of Blaine's eyes, Kurt's mind cast wildly about for something, anything to say. After a moment, he had it. He ran his tongue over his kiss-swollen lips and sucked in his first steady breath in an hour before he finally spoke.

 

When he did, it was a simple question. “Teach me more?”

 

And when Blaine answered, it was with but another wild kiss, and Kurt did not know anything more of sense for quite a long, pleasurable time.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurt is either hallucinating or, all unexpected, he has a surprise guest in his bed.

* * *

_I must stop drinking_ , Kurt vowed to himself as sunlight pierced bright and hateful through his tightly shut eyelids.  _Truly do I mean it this time_ .

 

He meant it  _every_ time, of course, but today's vow was aided by the fact that his head had never felt quite so much as if a colony of angry Frenchmen had taken up residence inside of it. More worryingly, he seemed to have developed a bent for hallucination, or at least he assumed it was hallucination. It was the only feasible explanation for the vivid, arousing images that were flickering across his inner vision. It was too entirely fantastic to even consider that Blaine Anderson would have ever been before Kurt, on his knees and sucking -

 

Kurt froze, his eyelids flying open as he became aware of a warm body snuggled up against his back, of a strong arm wrapped tight around his waist, of generous lips pressing kisses to his shoulder. No. It couldn't be. Had his hallucinations taken some sort of physical form?

 

He squeezed his eyes shut again. Was that even possible?

 

“Mm, good morning,” a voice murmured in sweet sleepiness between kisses. “I've been waiting-”

 

Grabbing the counterpane that covered them, Kurt leaped to his feet and shot halfway across the room before turning to face his unexpected morning guest, who was, quite gloriously, not a hallucination whatsoever.

 

Blaine Anderson reclined cheerfully in Kurt's bed, quite literally in the flesh, as he hadn't a stitch of clothing on his person. “Good morning,” he repeated, a bright smile lighting his handsome face. “As I was saying, I've been waiting simply ages for you to wake up. Hello.”

 

“You're here,” Kurt gasped, pulling the blanket tight around his own nude form. “You're here, you're -”

 

“Naked in your bed, yes,” Blaine confirmed with a nod. He reached one hand out and patted the empty area of bed that Kurt had so recently vacated. “Come back and we shall _both_ be naked in it. I'd quite enjoy that, I think you would as well.”

 

Kurt squeezed his eyes shut, only to feel his cheeks flush brilliant red as images of the previous evening flooded his mind once more. “So that means – all of these things – they're real memories,” he groaned, half-aroused, half-appalled. Such wanton, drunken behavior! He'd never been so indecorous in his life.

 

And yet...well. It had been so  _very_ pleasant...

 

“Very real,” came Blaine's agreement, and Kurt opened his eyes to see the other man slowly slipping out of the bed and pacing over to stand next to Kurt, caution darkening his amber eyes. “Very real, and quite amazing.”

 

“Amazing!” Kurt's mouth dropped open with shock. “But I was -”

 

“Incredible.” Blaine's voice was low and abruptly smoky with desire that was reflected as well in the heat of his gaze when he swept his long lashes up to pin Kurt in place with his eyes. “Beautiful. Sensual. The greatest privilege of my life was to touch you.” His face set with determination under his riotous tumble of curls, Blaine reached out to catch at Kurt's hand, pulling to hold it against his bare chest. “I can go on, should you wish or require it. It is no hardship to speak glorious truths.”

 

He did wish it, a bit. Who wouldn't want to have an utterly breathtaking man whispering sweet nothings in their ear? And yet it seemed ludicrous to have this man whisper such things to him, to  _Kurt Hummel_ , bumbling virgin...well, not exactly virgin anymore, he supposed. Oh, dear.

 

Kurt looked down at their joined hands, his cheeks still hot as he willed himself not to flee. He inhaled deeply, trying to put his thoughts in order. “I have never...this is...it's all so very new, you see,” he whispered, choosing to keep things simple. “I...”

 

Blaine's hand came up to touch his cheek, to lift his downcast face so that their eyes met. “You are splendid,” he murmured softly, his thumb stroking over Kurt's burning cheekbone. “Quite the most marvelous person I think I have ever met. And if you will allow it, I should love the opportunity to show you this, to put you at ease. It would be an excellent start to the day, by my thinking.”

 

The steady, open expression on Blaine's face combined with the soothing touch of his hand to let Kurt relax the slightest bit. “Truly? You would want to?”

 

“I said as much last night, if you can cast your memory back so far.” The lightest hint of affectionate teasing threaded through Blaine's voice. “Though it may be a bit of a slog given the veritable rivers of hot buttered rum you consumed.”

 

“At _your_ behest,” Kurt retorted, feeling his mouth curve into a smile. He clutched the counterpane more firmly around his shoulders with the hand that Blaine wasn't holding and gently squeezing. Idly, Kurt wished that the blanket were an embrace from Blaine instead – and then realized that indeed, that was something he could have, if Blaine were to be believed. The thought lifted his heart ever higher, melted the tension out of his shoulders. “You quite took advantage of me, sir,” he found himself able to tease, fluttering his eyelashes in a parody of enticement.

 

“You quite allowed me to do so.” With a roguish wink, Blaine began to step backwards towards the bed, perforce tugging Kurt after him. “But you are rather clearheaded now. You can tell me to go, and I shall.”

 

“No, I...no.” Bashfulness began to overtake Kurt once more, causing him to duck his head. Blaine's finger touched his chin, tipping it right back up.

 

“You shall have to cease being so shy, Kurt, you're much too handsome for it,” Blaine informed him quietly, his eyes melting and darkening in a way that called up more memories from the night prior and weakened Kurt's knees. 

 

“I'm not sure how...” he demurred, still dutifully stepping after Blaine but feeling his face burn hot again. How could he reconcile desire and uncertainty?

 

Blaine, happily, seemed bent on helping him try, bless him. “Shall I repeat our lesson from last night?” he asked, stopping as the backs of his legs hit the bed. “Shall I show you once more how you are to be revered, not thought of as shameful? It is a lesson I should be quite happy to repeat until you understand it.” He did not take his eyes off of Kurt as he eased up onto the bed, did not let go, tugging at Kurt's hands so that he had little choice but to follow. 

 

“I...” Kurt did not know what he wanted, precisely. Or rather, he knew exactly what he wanted but lacked both the words and composure to express it. He crawled up into the bed after Blaine, both of them slipping down to lay facing each other while Kurt tugged the counterpane up to cover them both.

 

Blaine reached out and once more cupped a hand along Kurt's cheek, a sweet smile on his face. “Your eyes are so wide in just this moment,” he whispered, letting his thumb brush over Kurt's cheekbone again. “I wonder, if I were to place my hand on your heart, would it flutter like that of a captive songbird?”

 

“I think so,” Kurt confessed, his voice with most of the breath stolen quite away. Without the warm, liberating rush of alcohol in his veins, his nerves were pulled taut and they burned as if they had been set afire. The breath he could spare quickened in his chest as Blaine's hand traced down his cheek, along his neck, and across his chest until it came to rest at last over his frantically beating heart.

 

“How can I put you at ease, songbird?” Blaine moved in close, letting their foreheads touch, his nose trace gently along Kurt's. “How do I show you that you've nothing to fear, that I wish to bring only pleasure to your eminently deserving self?”

 

Kurt ducked his head once more. “I don't know.”

 

“This will never do.” The hand not covering Kurt's heart tipped his chin up again to meet Blaine's amused gaze. “I think we ought to play a game.”

 

“Ought we?” Kurt wondered what sort of game they _could_ play, given their current state of being unclothed.

 

“Oh, we ought.” Blaine was nodding, and mischief danced in the light and shadows of his eyes. “I propose that no matter what I do, no matter what else I ask you to do, that you must never, ever take your eyes off of my face.”

 

“Never take -” Kurt began, confused, only to be cut off by Blaine's finger over his lips.

 

“Never take your eyes off of my face, no matter what,” he confirmed with a nod. “Let's start with this.” And before Kurt could try to ask more questions, the finger covering his lips suddenly slipped between them, sliding past his teeth and coming to rest on his tongue. Confused, Kurt blinked at Blaine, who simply smiled.

 

“Suck on it,” came the gentle but implacable command.

 

Well, what else was there to do but obey? Closing his eyes, Kurt began tentatively to suck on Blaine's finger, letting his tongue swirl around the knuckle, into the lines of the finger, his lips growing wet as he worked.

 

“Ah-ah.” Admonishment filled Blaine's voice. “Open your eyes, Kurt. You're to keep them on me at all times.”

 

This was going to prove to be difficult. Color rose in Kurt's cheeks as he allowed his eyelids to flutter open, to take in the sight of Blaine's steady gaze melting into the deep ochre tone he vaguely remembered from the night prior. Swallowing hard, he redoubled his efforts, head bobbing and recalling more salacious memories involving Blaine kneeling at his feet and - 

 

Kurt began to grow hard, and wondered if Blaine, too, found this to be arousing. He guessed that he must, for his breath was quickening as Kurt worked his finger over with lips and tongue, his cheeks too were coloring bright, and his eyes...oh, those eyes that made so many promises of mischief and desire.

 

“Another finger,” Blaine whispered, roughness edging his voice. “Open your mouth, Kurt, take it in.”

 

Lifting his hand, Kurt grasped Blaine's palm as he sucked now at two fingers, never taking his eyes off of Blaine's as he licked and pulled. His self-consciousness was falling away under the spell of Blaine's gaze, superseded by his ever growing desire. But he did not move closer, did not take further liberties, merely confined himself to the sensation and taste of Blaine's fingers on his tongue, trapped by his lips. 

 

All unexpected, a groan tore out of Blaine's throat and he pulled his fingers abruptly away, replacing them with his mouth, his hands gripping the back of Kurt's head as his tongue invaded and claimed with all the desperation of a man going to war. He jerked away as quickly as he'd begun, holding his hand up in front of Kurt's face again. “Lick it – the palm, get it wet as quickly as you can.”

 

Obediently, Kurt did, Blaine's urgency seizing him in a tight grip. He let the tip of his tongue trace in and along the lifelines in Blaine's palm, dragged the flat of it over the heel of his hand. And the entire time, he kept his eyes locked on Blaine's exactly as instructed, watching the fascinating shift of color in the other man's gaze as Kurt worked. He wished he dared shift his hips closer, to reach his own hand down to ease his lust, or to explore the state of Blaine's.

 

Mesmerized as he was, Kurt had no warning when Blaine tugged his warm, damp palm free and thrust it down between their two bodies, wrapping it suddenly around Kurt's straining cock and beginning to stroke with a firm, relentless grip. “Give me your hand,” he demanded, locking his gaze with Kurt's ever more tightly. “Give me your hand, and keep your eyes on mine.”

 

Kurt raised his hand up to Blaine's face, excitement flooding his body when Blaine began to lick and suck at it as well. It was almost too much, the sensation of being pleasantly pulled in all directions overwhelming his mind and body, but still Kurt kept his head enough to watch Blaine, to see his own long, pale fingers disappearing between Blaine's red lips.

 

And Blaine never tore his gaze away from Kurt.

 

“Do as I do,” Blaine instructed, guiding Kurt's slick palm down to encircle his cock exactly as Blaine's hand held Kurt's aching shaft. “Stroke in rhythm, with me, and don't...” He gasped a little as Kurt began to do as he was told, swallowed and continued on, but his voice was just that slightest bit more unsteady, and Kurt wondered if it would come more undone if he were to grip harder. “Don't take your eyes off of me.”

 

Then, it seemed, words deserted them both as they stroked each other in tandem, gazes locked and breath coming in long, ragged sucking inhalations. Kurt felt his grip to be just a little more clumsy than Blaine's, his touch a little more inexpert, but Blaine seemed not to care, biting down on his lower lip as his hips rocked forward, thrusting his erection through the circle of Kurt's fist.

 

“It seems almost a waste to simply touch you,” came the harsh, strained rasp of Blaine's voice, “when I know how you taste...and yet this way I can see you so clearly, watch you fly apart...” And yet, oh, how Blaine sounded as though he were coming quite apart himself with Kurt's fingers squeezing and stroking at his cock.

 

Kurt had naturally touched himself before, had held his own cock many a time. And he'd seen the private anatomy of models before – had seen Blaine's, of course. But this was the first time he had ever held another man in his hand, touched the velvety warmth of skin wrapping over what felt like heated steel. He let his thumb brush over the head, his fingers to trace over the ridge and down the shaft.

 

It fit into his palm as if forged to do so, each fold and ridge melting into the curves and lines of Kurt's hand. And never had he realized that each pull and tug could unravel Blaine a thread at a time, could tease out tiny broken gasps and ragged breaths. He was finding it difficult to keep his eyes on Blaine's when all he wanted to do was tilt his head forward and catch Blaine's lips with his, to take each whimper and moan into his mouth like the most necessary of lifebreaths.

 

But orders were orders, and Kurt Hummel had his honor.

 

He did, however, allow his free hand to reach out and grip at Blaine's shoulder, then the back of the other man's head, holding tight as he felt the fiend's fire of climax unwinding at the base of his spine. His own breath stuttered and shook as he kept his eyes firmly on Blaine's, even as the firm stroke of Blaine's hand grew ever faster.  


And then Blaine uttered the words that would send Kurt flying.

 

“Can you...will you come for me, Kurt? Please...come...”

 

His eyes closed of their own accord as he went over the edge, and he opened his mouth to let out a shuddering breath, only to feel Blaine's lips on his, their groans pressed together and mingling as his hips bucked forward, sliding his cock through the pressure of Blaine's fist. Tongues clashed and tangled, Kurt's hand curled into a fist filled with the soft curls at the base of Blaine's neck. Sticky warmth spread hot across Kurt's stomach as Blaine, too, reached his peak and his entire body went rigid, then collapsed against Kurt with a last soft exhalation like a quiet little death.

 

The only sounds that filled the room then were their panting breaths, and Kurt's entire world seemed centered on the man in front of him, who had brought his hand back up to brush gently at Kurt's temple before pulling him close into a kiss that was sweet and lovely, simple and less fraught with urgency than just moments ago. “You,” Blaine finally managed, leaning back to stare into Kurt's eyes, “steal my breath quite away, do you know this?”

 

“I could say the same to you,” Kurt replied with a tremulous laugh, still trying to bring his breathing back into a steady rhythm. It was difficult, though - sunlight streamed in over his shoulder to cover Blaine in a golden nimbus of light, warming his skin tone and turning his hazel eyes into miniature suns themselves. Truly he was indeed the physical embodiment of Apollo, a god dallying amongst the mortals in an earthly paradise, bringing pleasure and delight to all who crossed his path.

 

He was so beautiful to look upon that it made Kurt's heart ache.

 

Blaine was smiling as he watched Kurt. “You think so loudly I can hear you, yet I cannot make anything out clearly.” His thumb brushed over Kurt's bottom lip, gently denting the cushion of it. “Will you not share your thoughts?”

 

“They are nothing of consequence,” Kurt demurred, blushing. “Only that you...that you are...”

 

Blaine tilted his head. “I am what?”

 

“Beautiful. You are the god on earth, not I.” He sighed, remembering Blaine's words from the previous night through a haze of firelight and desire. It was laughable to think of himself as anything unearthly, as prosaic and bound by his insecurities and fears as he so often was.

 

“Can we not both be as gods on earth?” Blaine's question was softly amused, his cheeks dimpled with his sweet smile that made Kurt want to believe anything and everything he said. “I do stand by what I say, you know. I should in fact liken you to Eros, god of love and desire, for surely do you stir such things within me.”

 

Kurt let out a startled laugh and felt his cheeks flood with color. “I'm no such thing.”

 

“You are.” In a moment, Blaine's lips were on Kurt's again, and Kurt could almost feel the other man trying to breathe his assurance directly into his body.

 

When they broke apart, he lowered his head, still trying to understand quite how he had gotten to this so-fortunate pass. “We should get to work for the day,” he breathed, still grappling with the rush of emotion he had felt at Blaine's words. “It's only...the light, it shall fade...and we are meant to be working.”

 

“Ah. Indeed.” Blaine waited for Kurt to slip out of the bed before following him, ambling casually over to a puddle of sunlight that seemed to have been specifically placed there by the gods themselves for his especial use. “I suppose this will do? As I've no need to dress for what you've planned, I believe I am prepared for my day of posing.”

 

Swallowing hard, Kurt told himself that he could  _not_ simply drag Blaine back to bed. “I believe that you are.”

 

“You ought to put on something, though.” The lightly amused words floated back over Blaine's shoulder, accompanied by an arousing low chuckle. “Else I shall be distracted by you, Eros, and shall be quite happy to forget you ever spoke a single word about work.”

 

Kurt mulled over the pleasant images this raised in his mind, Blaine's thoughts running so very parallel with his own...surely a single day would make no difference in his work? They could get to the charcoal sketches tomorrow...

 

Blaine's smirk as he stood nude in his puddle of sunlight was oh, so tempting. Kurt wanted to kiss it right off his face.

 

But no. In the end, Kurt sighed and gathered up his trousers, sliding them up his legs and hitching the braces over his shoulders. At least one consolation was that once he was done working for the day, his model wouldn't necessarily be in a hurry to leave. In fact, he might not want to leave at all.

 

Considerably cheered by this thought, Kurt positively bounced over to his easel, picked up a charcoal stick and got to work.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a long day of work, Blaine is an eager teacher and Kurt quite a very apt pupil.

* * *

Several hours later, he did have to admit that Blaine's lessons were already of considerable help, even after only one day.

 

Though Kurt found his cheeks still burning as he focused his gaze on the model, it was more to do with the fact that mere hours before, they'd been tangled together in Kurt's bed and less to do with his excessive sense of modesty. It was difficult, he found, to be modest when Blaine was wandering around with the attitude that nudity was much more to his liking than being clothed. Which was not an attitude that Kurt had any interest in dispelling whatsoever.

 

Further, Kurt was not entirely sure he had any business  _being_ modest when he grew hard every time he so much as glanced over at the cheval glass in the corner. The memories that sprang to mind then were not precisely of the chaste variety. 

 

It did gall him slightly to think that Rossetti might have been correct – that all he had needed was to shed himself of the burden of his virginity in order to relax more as a painter and a person, but the benefits of doing so were rather difficult to ignore. As soon as Blaine had taken his first proper pose and they'd gotten down to the business of art, Kurt had found himself seized by inspiration, his fingers and charcoal stick smudging over countless sheets of paper. The discarded ideas and lessons he had gathered from figure drawing class he dredged up from the recesses of his brain and dusted off, applying them with a focus that would have left his former instructors at the Academy slackjawed with astonishment, had they been watching.

 

And Blaine was a surprisingly excellent model, holding a pose for as long as was asked of him, whether standing or sitting, and despite Hunt's assertions to the contrary, he was quiet. He did not offer opinions unless asked and seemed content to pose in silence. Kurt was beginning to find him fascinating in ways that transcended the physical.

 

“Where do you go, when you pose?” Kurt asked over a lunch of withered apples and sharp cheese. “In your head, that is to say. I should think it must be quite tedious to model, we artists are so self-absorbed and buried in our work...it can't be terribly amusing for you.”

 

Blaine tipped one bare shoulder up into a mild shrug, reaching for a tankard of cider. “I enjoy reading, and I have an excellent memory, so I much of the time I ruminate on favored poems and passages. It's a nice way to pass the time.” Over the rim of his mug, he raised his eyebrows and winked mischievously. “Sometimes I think of you.”

 

“Oh.” Kurt looked down, suddenly deeply interested in his wedge of cheese.

 

“Naked.”

 

He swallowed. “I see.”

 

“I find that to be an even nicer way to pass the time.” Lowering the vessel in his hand, Blaine leveled a slow, seductive smile on Kurt that sent a rush of heat through his entire body and sent his thoughts skittering directly into the gutter. _Dear Lord in Heaven,_ his mind managed to squeak out before utterly shutting down to wallow in depraved debauchery for several delicious moments.

 

Of course, this caused Kurt to blush and stammer and lose his composure most entirely. He retreated behind his easel and immersed himself in his preliminary sketching once again, for naturally his modesty had not been  _entirely_ erased by a single day's worth of carnal pleasure. Blaine merely chuckled, finished his cider, and resumed the pose he'd been holding when they left off.  _Damn your composure_ , Kurt thought with a mingling of admiration and jealousy. Would that he could be so at ease with himself and others.

 

Ah, well. Perhaps in time. For now, to work.

 

Kurt had asked Blaine to assume a variety of positions, but he thought this one he was in now might be the one he chose for the painting. Reminiscent of Michaelangelo's  _David_ , the stance showed Blaine's figure off to excellent effect while not being salacious. He planned to obtain a replica of a lyre, or at least something he could use to simulate the effect of one while Blaine modeled, and perhaps a few plants could be borrowed from somewhere to act as a makeshift forest glen.

 

He sketched feverishly, fully immersed in the image of an Grecian clearing, a clear little pond with fish, he thought – though where might he obtain live fish and a pond? Apollo standing near a willow tree with his lyre, a smile of pleasure on his face as he strummed at the strings, yes, this was an image Kurt quite liked. His gaze could be directed Heavenward, towards the sun with which he was so often associated and in whose light he bathed. Little fauns and nymphs could be seen peeking here and there from behind trees and plants to listen to the music that their god produced.

 

Apollo would be the focal point of the work, yes, there, adorned with only a crown of laurel and, oh, all right, perhaps a light draping cloth to conceal his manhood where it bobbed about so rudely and ere-

 

Kurt jerked his mind out of the clouds when he realized what he was seeing.”Blaine.”

 

Blinking, Blaine shook his head and glanced inquiringly at Kurt. “Yes, Kurt?”

 

“Are you thinking of me – of us? Not of poetry?”

 

Blaine glanced down at his groin and, to his credit, flushed slightly. “That is...entirely possible.”

 

And now Kurt was thinking of the two of them as well. That was his concentration ruined for the day. He sighed, glancing out the window. The sun had retreated behind a haze of gray stormclouds anyway, so it wasn't as if he'd be able to work for much longer. He allowed his eyes to drift back over to where Blaine was stretching and bending, working out the stiffness that had accumulated in his muscles over long hours of standing.

 

Well...not  _all_ of the stiffness. Kurt almost didn't notice when his tongue snaked out of his mouth and licked over his lips as he watched Blaine moving around, his firmly muscled backside all but inviting Kurt to grab at it, to mouth and bite at it -

 

Bite at it! Where in the world was he getting these salacious ideas? Blaine Anderson was quite possibly an even worse influence than Rossetti, and that was a bar that had been set rather high by the mad Italian poet-painter. Impressive that Blaine was managing to leap over it as if it were no more an obstacle than a child's paper cut out!

 

Blaine straightened up and turned to Kurt, a patently false innocence now all over his face as if he had no idea what his slow bends and stretches had done. “So are we to be done for the day, then?”

 

Kurt nodded, heaving a tiny sigh that was only slightly regretful over the need to cease working. He found it quite difficult to be more than slightly regretful given that Blaine was sauntering over to him, cocky smirk on his face and an erection that would give greater men than Kurt pause. “Quite...yes...done...”

 

“You're covered in charcoal dust.” Blaine tutted and lifted Kurt's hand to trace over the gray film covering his fingers. “We shall have to tend to that.” He turned and spotted the washbasin and jug of water that Kurt kept by the always smoldering fire so that it would stay warm. “Ah, the very thing.”

 

With a lopsided smile, he ambled over to pour water into the basin, reminding Kurt quite irresistibly of paintings of Grecian water bearers as he picked up the bowl and brought it over to set at Kurt's feet. In another moment he had fetched up a small square of cloth to use as a washrag and was by Kurt's side once more, batting Kurt's hand away from where it was beginning to tug the strap of his braces off of his shoulders. “You would deprive me of the privilege of removing your clothing?” he asked, chuckling dark and low. “Perish the thought.”

 

“Apologies, I'm not accustomed...” Kurt felt the flush of heat starting at his collarbones and spreading up to color his neck and face that detestable burning crimson. “As I said, this takes some getting used to. You, I mean. This is all so very new.”

 

“But not unpleasant, am I correct?” Blaine cast a quick glance up at Kurt, a tiny smirk curving his pretty mouth before he returned his attention to where he was wiping charcoal dust away from Kurt's fingers. “In time, I think you will find that this all comes more easily. I certainly did.”

 

Kurt laughed. “I find it difficult to believe that you were ever as awkward and shy as I.”

 

“I pledge you, I was.” Dipping the cloth into the bowl of water, Blaine gently washed streaks of dust from Kurt's forearms. He appeared to be deep in thought for a time before he spoke again. “I've an older brother who seemed to have been blessed with all of the confidence in the world and a mother and father who doted on him. So I was invisible, after a fashion, and bookish, which did not aid me in making friends.”

 

“How then...” Kurt was still trying to imagine bold, playful Blaine ever being quiet and bookish. The picture was stubbornly refusing to coalesce into anything resembling comprehension.

 

“Well, school, you see. Not having any sort of artistic bent, I was sent off to a boys' school.” Blaine turned his attention to finger-shaped stripes of dust on Kurt's chest, where he had absentmindedly wiped his charcoal covered hands at intervals during his workday. The water was now cooling, and Kurt felt his nipples tighten to pebbles as the cloth moved over them, making him swallow hard as the sensation caused a corresponding tightening in his trousers. Yet Blaine appeared to take no notice, simply continuing to bathe Kurt as he spoke in a dreamy, detached tone. “And there I met someone like me, or rather, someone like who I was beginning to figure out I was at the time – I was young, and realizing I wasn't very interested in young ladies as I should have been, and it was a terribly confusing time.”

 

“It surely must have been.” Kurt remembered his time of discovery all too well, and he'd had no one to aid him through it. Sympathy and envy alike coursed through veins that already felt as though they channeled liquid fire through his body. “You were quite fortunate.”

 

A small smile played on Blaine's lips. “I was indeed.” Dropping the cloth into the basin, he tugged at the buttons on Kurt's trousers, undoing each of them in turn until he released Kurt's stiffening cock from its confines. Yet he appeared to be wholly uninterested in it, simply bending and stooping to pull the trousers down Kurt's legs, tapping at his knee until he lifted his feet so that they could be fully removed. “Thaddeus was kind enough to explain to me that I was not alone, and even kinder to offer to...tutor me.”

 

Well, this was beginning to sound familiar. “ _Was_ he,” Kurt trilled archly, fighting back rising jealousy. After all, it was not as if the mysterious Thaddeus were still in the picture, for if he were, then Blaine would not be here with Kurt.  _Be logical_ , he chastised himself, watching Blaine pick the damp washcloth up again.

 

“It was a stroke of luck whose like I did not experience again until you and I crossed paths.” Blaine straightened up and pulled Kurt close, kissing him softly. The wet cloth in his hand dripped cool water down Kurt's back, raising gooseflesh there that made him shiver – or was it the proximity of Blaine himself causing that? “There have been others since then, but none who caught my attention quite so firmly as you have done.”

 

As simple as Blaine's kiss was, it still had the effect of leaving Kurt quite breathless and wit-scrambled. And before he could even begin to gather himself together, Blaine was slipping around behind him and gently scrubbing at his back, making more water droplets cascade down his skin. One particular squeeze at the cloth in the center of Kurt's back sent a slender rivulet of water trickling down his back and into the cleft of his buttocks, raising more gooseflesh, causing more shivers.

 

When Blaine wrapped his arms around Kurt from behind, Kurt felt the heat of his manhood nestling in that cleft, slipping a little over the hidden entrance there. “Thaddeus showed me a great many things,” he murmured, his hand with the cloth reaching down to tug lazily at Kurt's erection. His hand lingered too shortly and Kurt almost whimpered when he let go, only to gasp when the newly dampened cloth was guided even more gently between his buttocks, a cold shock on the delicate skin there. “So many things that I've never wanted to show anyone else until now.”

 

Carefully, he turned Kurt to face the wall behind them. “You may wish to brace yourself,” he instructed softly, kissing at the nape of Kurt's neck, kissing down, slipping tastes and kisses and strokes of his tongue down the skin of Kurt's back. Kurt's nipples tightened further when Blaine opened his mouth wide to nip and bite, never hard enough to hurt, only enough to send a delicious thrill straight to his cock. He couldn't help but tilt his head back and groan, low and throaty, when Blaine's fingers pressed hard into the muscle of his buttocks and carefully parted them, exposing his most secret of places.

 

Then, soft and featherlike, Blaine's tongue flickered once, twice, three times over the puckered skin that was revealed there, and if Kurt had not been stiff as a poker before, he would have been now over that most intimate of kisses. His member brushed against the ragged papering over the wall he faced and he nearly came from just that contact.

 

But no. He wanted more of what Blaine was doing, did not want Blaine to stop. Kurt shifted his feet apart and pushed back, just a little, just enough to move his over-sensitive cock away from the wall. Blaine, however, was perfectly positioned just then so that when Kurt pushed back, the tip of Blaine's tongue slid right inside of Kurt's hole, and Kurt's knees softened and felt almost as though they wished to melt quite away in that moment.

 

Humming moans vibrated against Kurt's skin as Blaine's mouth covered his hole, his tongue plunging gently in and out, slicking and opening Kurt up more with each stroke. He was kissing Kurt, kissing as deeply and thoroughly as if he were invading his mouth. His fingers kneaded at Kurt's buttocks, holding him open so that Blaine could lick and taste and kiss unhindered.

 

Kurt felt that in the last day he had thought just about nothing other than,  _I have never felt anything like this before_ . But it was true! Every experience with Blaine was a new range of sensations, all linked to his aching cock yet separate and distinct in their own way. 

 

One of Blaine's hands crept around his hip, the fingers lightly teasing at the head of Kurt's cock where he was already leaking hot sticky fluid. Blaine did not grip his cock, did not stroke and squeeze as he had this morning. He merely touched, simply allowed his fingers to graze and dance along the shaft and head. All the while, his tongue still thrust and worked inside of Kurt's hole, making Kurt squirm and gasp, fingers curling against the tattered wallpaper, his nails tearing little bits of it off as he flexed and shifted his hands.

 

And if Blaine's  _tongue_ could do all of this to him, if just his warm, wet tongue could unravel the fabric of Kurt's control one silken thread at a time, what could  _more_ do? Kurt wasn't completely without knowledge, he knew there was so much more he could experience at Blaine's clever hands – what could  _more_ make him feel, make him  _do_ ?

 

Even more interesting was the fleeting, wondering thought – what could  _Kurt_ do to  _Blaine_ ?

 

As the thought crossed Kurt's mind, Blaine's hand encircled his aching shaft and began to stroke, and then Kurt couldn't handle a single moment more. This time his climax hit without warning, collapsing him to his knees as soon as the first hot streams began to spurt from his cock. Deprived of his access to Kurt's hole, Blaine lost no time in pulling him tight to his chest, sucking and biting kisses into Kurt's neck as he arched and cried out in his ecstasy. 

 

Panting with exertion, Kurt didn't allow himself even a single moment of recovery time, but scrambled around and pushed Blaine over onto his back, ignoring the “oof!” of surprise that shot out of the other man's mouth when he hit the floorboards. Now it was Blaine's turn to come undone, to writhe under the eager if inexpert attention of Kurt's mouth. 

 

Blaine's cock was thick and hot, stretching Kurt's lips wide as he tried to take in as much as he could. He tried to remember all of the things Blaine had done that had made him feel like he was flying, all of the sucks and tongue strokes and long melting licks up the shaft. With the tip of his tongue, Kurt touched on and traced each vein and fold and felt that if he had thought his hand was made to hold Blaine's cock, then yes, oh yes, his mouth was absolutely meant to suck it.

 

Pulling back, Kurt licked a hasty wet stripe up his palm and wrapped his hand around the throbbing member before him, stroking where his mouth couldn't reach. He centered his attentions on the head, swollen and a dusky dark pink with pearls of seed beading at the tip. The droplets tasted salty and sharp as he licked all of them up, burrowing the very pointed tip of his tongue ever so gently into the slit there. Above his head, Blaine was cursing and bucking his hips up hard, utterly falling to pieces at Kurt's hands.

 

Good. Turnabout was, after all, only fair play.

 

A hand thrust into his hair and gripped tight, and that was all the warning he had as Blaine shouted and emptied himself down Kurt's throat. Kurt swallowed it all, coaxing out every last drop that he could get as Blaine gasped and his curses trailed off into incoherent moans and whimpers. He let his hand move more and more gently as Blaine collapsed as if boneless, almost appearing to sink right into the floorboards, until at last they both were still, the room filled with the scent of sex and the sound of ragged breathing. Kurt crawled up to rest his head on Blaine's chest, snuggling close with a sigh of contentment.

 

Blaine's lips pressed a slow kiss into Kurt's hair. “I think,” he began, voice blurred and soft with sleepy amusement, “that you have already proven yourself to be rather the apt pupil.”

 

“I think you have more to show me,” Kurt countered, letting his lips curve into a satisfied smile. He felt rather like the proverbial cat in the cream. _Literally, really_ , he thought as he licked his lips to catch up a stray droplet of Blaine's spendings.

 

A low chuckle reverberated through Blaine's chest, jostling Kurt's head. “Time will tell, lover. Time will tell.”

 

_Not if it has its mouth full,_ Kurt thought with a smirk.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Lizzie and Gabriel pay a surprise visit to Kurt, they certainly get more than what they expected.

* * *

In the greenhouse studio, Rossetti slumped into his favorite chair and sighed loudly.

 

Lizzie ignored him, her tongue flicking out to lick at her lips as she squinted at the sketchbook she held. She was concentrating very hard on the fruit bowl before her, working on her perspective.

 

He tried again, heaving an even larger sigh and making conspicuous amounts of noise shifting about.

 

Nothing. Lizzie sketched on, frowning at the blameless green pear sitting in her bowl. She reached out and twitched it over an infinitesimal distance to the left. Nibbling at her lower lip, she picked up her charcoal stick and resumed working, not paying a single whit of attention to him.

 

Clearly, more drastic measures would be required.

 

Five seconds later, an outcry rang through the studio and Lizzie brought her sketchbook swinging down hard on Rossetti's head where it was abruptly burrowed beneath her skirts. “Gabriel! What has gotten into you?”

 

“I'm bored,” he whined, emerging with an aggrieved expression on his face while he rubbed his aching head. “I want to go out, Lizzie. We've not been to the Gardens in ever so long, we've been holed up in here working and not having any fun at all.”

 

“Well, I thought last night was rather a lot of fun myself,” she retorted, but relented when she saw his pout. Leaning down, she kissed him fondly and cupped his cheek. “Poor Gabriel. All work and no play, hm?” She tilted her head up and looked thoughtful, considering their options. “You have gotten paid for that last commission you did, and I have a bit of money from Papa...I suppose we could afford it. Why not?”

 

“Excellent!” Rossetti hopped to his feet and snatched up his greatcoat. “Let's be off, before you change your mind.”

 

Setting her book and charcoal carefully aside, Lizzie got up and thumped the dust from her skirts. “Do you know, we've not seen Kurt in a rather long time,” she mused, moving to wash her hands. “Perhaps we ought to stop by and coax him to come out with us.”

 

Rossetti rolled his eyes. “Must we?”

 

“It would be nice.” Casting a reproachful glance over her shoulder, Lizzie dried her hands and picked up her hat, fitting it carefully over her hair. “He is our friend and your student. It behooves us to see him from time to time, and drag him out if he's being a bit of a hermit.” A smile brightened her face. “Perhaps he's working and that's why we've not seen him! We should see what he's working on, Gabriel, we really should.”

 

“More likely he's holed up in his rooms rocking back and forth whilst sobbing in despair over his virginity,” Gabriel grumbled, still wishing to go directly to the pleasure gardens. Lizzie reached over and flicked her fingers at the brim of his hat, knocking it askew.

 

“For that, you can stand him drinks at the Gardens,” she chided, swinging a cloak over her shoulders against the chill of the night. “It's unkind thing to say, for shame, Gabriel.”

 

He arched an eyebrow. “Yet I do not hear you denying that it is a legitimate possibility.”

 

Lizzie's face went as red as her hair. “It's still unkind!”

 

They bickered cheerily on the long walk to Kurt's lodgings, a distance of perhaps a mile or so from Rossetti's greenhouse studio. The imposing building Kurt lived in had actually belonged to his father before he passed on, and while Kurt had inherited it, he couldn't afford to keep all of it for his own use, so he'd made an arrangement that turned it into a sort of rooming house on the lower two floors. He, in turn, got to keep the third floor garret for his own use on the strict proviso that the woman who ran the lodgings below never bothered him for any reason. This she was happy to do, since it afforded her an excellent income with no bother from the actual landlord, who took only as much as he needed to get by, and only rarely at that. She didn't think much of the guests he received, but it wasn't her place to say anything, so she never did.

 

Thus it was that Lizzie and Rossetti found themselves let into the house by the taciturn matron, who gestured them up the stairs with nary a word before disappearing back into her own little set of rooms. They'd been here a number of times before, and so felt comfortable with simply skipping up the numerous steps to Kurt's garret to let themselves in. All of the Brotherhood were accustomed to barging in on each other at all hours for any reason they could think of. They were, after all, a Brotherhood.

 

The steps were steep and the climb an exhausting one – the sort of climb that made one long to turn back at the halfway point, except that it was the halfway point, so the trip oughtn't be wasted. Gabriel muttered grumpy curses under his breath as they trudged endlessly upwards, ignoring Lizzie's chiding glances. 

 

As the pair made their way up the last rickety stretch of stairs, they became aware of voices in the studio. One was absolutely Kurt; the other Gabriel recognized as Blaine Anderson. _Really?_ he thought, amused. It was something of a late hour for anything but close friends. Could it actually be that against all odds, Hummel had indeed forged some sort of connection with the model and _was_ working on something? 

 

'Something' of course could be either getting plowed regularly or actually painting, it made no difference to Gabriel which it was. Either one would surely make Hummel a much easier person to know, he decided. Now he  _had_ to know what was going on. He grabbed Lizzie's hand and picked up his pace, suddenly eager to eavesdrop rather than barge in.

 

Just as they approached the door, the two artists heard a loud crash and outcry from the studio. Lizzie clutched at Rossetti's arm. "Gabriel! That sounded like Kurt!"

 

It had indeed. "Shh." Gabriel waved her quiet, though he too felt some alarm. That had sounded like rather a violent sort of encounter. Was Anderson in fact some sort of brigand? The floppy haired Bohemian hadn't really struck him as such but, as Rossetti was frequently informed, it wasn't as if he himself had any room to judge another person's character. 

 

Lizzie was tugging at his arm, a pleading look on her face as she pointed up towards the door. Clearly she wanted him to do something, and really, he wasn't entirely opposed to the idea. He wanted to help his protegé if he were in trouble, especially since he would have rather indirectly caused said trouble by introducing Hummel to Anderson. On the other hand, he was only human. Human, with a strong sense of self-preservation. Rossetti paused, considering what precisely to do.

 

In the end, curiosity and concern won out, and he pressed his finger to his lips, glancing at Lizzie, who nodded. They began to make their way up the stairs again, avoiding the creaky step near the top. To their surprise, the studio door was open the tiniest crack, and to their alarm, the commotion inside of it was getting louder and more urgent. Leaning carefully, Gabriel and Lizzie peered cautiously through the crack in the door - only to be utterly startled by the sight that greeted them. 

 

It certainly wasn't an assault, or if it was...Hummel wasn't objecting. Not in the slightest.

 

* * *

 

All the air left Kurt's lungs in a rush as Blaine tackled him against the wall of the studio, pinning his wrists against the peeling, faded floral wallpaper. He claimed Kurt's mouth in a brutal, desperate kiss that pulled needy whines from Kurt's throat. "Clothing, why do we have to wear clothing," he muttered between kisses, his own breath coming in heaving groans. "It just...gets...in the...way..."

 

Kurt pulled his wrists from Blaine's grip so that he could tug his lover's cravat and collar loose. "Mustn't shock...society," he mumbled, yanking the blue silk free and beginning to tear at the buttons of Blaine's shirt. "Would be...scandal."

 

"God, I don't care, I don't _care_ __ , I just want to fuck you senseless," Blaine groaned, pressing up hard so that Kurt couldn't miss the hot swelling of his erect cock against Kurt's thigh, even through their trousers. He yanked Kurt's waistcoat and braces right off and tossed them aside. "Four days in Cornwall with my family, might as well have been four days in Purgatory."

 

“I missed you,” Kurt gasped, and immediately wished that he had refrained. It wasn't that he hadn't missed Blaine – he had, like an abruptly vanished limb or a sudden loss of sight – but he was trying not to get too close, trying to not let his heart fall into Blaine's hands. He could not afford to; they had begun work on _Apollo And His Lyre_ in earnest, Kurt had laid down the first layers of paint while Blaine was gone, and each brushstroke was a tick of the clock closer to what Kurt was sure would have to be the end.

 

Once the painting was done, there would be no reason for them to spend time together. Blaine would surely depart his life as mercurially as he had entered it, leaving Kurt Hummel a whole new person as an artist and a man...but without Blaine. He could hardly bear to contemplate the thought.

 

Kurt shoved aside the stormclouds in his mind and tore Blaine's shirt away, fusing their mouths back together in a kiss as desperate as it was incendiary. He let his fingers slide through Blaine's curls, gripping tight until a moan spilled from Blaine's lips into Kurt's, broken and helpless.

 

“Need you, now,” he mumbled, ripping at the fly of Kurt's trousers and yanking them down and off so quickly that Kurt hardly had time to kick off the slippers on his feet. They fumbled and grasped and pulled at each other's clothing until it was scattered around the studio like discarded flowers and nothing came between them at all, flushed skin to flushed skin, Blaine's fingers digging into Kurt's buttocks while his knuckles scraped against the wall.

 

“Turn,” came the order, and Kurt obeyed, knowing to place his palms flat against the wall and breathe deeply to calm his racing heart. The pop of a cork from a glass vial sent shivers of anticipation rattling down his spine seconds before Blaine's oil-slick fingers began to press deep and slow into the most private area of Kurt's body. Kurt tipped his head back to give voice to a low, guttural groan that seemed to wind its way up from the very tips of his toes.

 

There was a delicious ache and burn to the slow prelude of stretching that was nearly as pleasurable as what it preceded – almost, for as nimble and clever as Blaine's fingers were, Kurt had found that they did not compare at all to being utterly and completely filled by the thick bulk of his cock. This was a delight they'd slowly worked up to in the weeks they'd spent together, each tantalizing step more of a tease than the last as it burned away the shredding fibers of Kurt's uncertainty. But worth it, so entirely and unregrettably worth it.

 

The first time Blaine had seated himself fully inside of Kurt in this way had rendered both of them breathless and still as they tried to comprehend the closeness and intimacy of the moment. They had stared at each other, wide-eyed in mutual surprise – until Blaine had begun to rock his hips, to slowly move inside of Kurt, and they both began to fall to pieces together. It had been a moment that branded itself indelibly on Kurt's mind, heart, and possibly even his very soul.

 

Tonight, however, was proving to be a far less contemplative exercise. “Do you know how secure that wall sconce is?” Blaine asked urgently, his breath hot against the back of Kurt's neck as he worked his fingers into his lover with care.

 

Blinking dazedly, Kurt peered up at the sconce in question. “I have...oh...” He swallowed and squirmed as Blaine's fingertips brushed against a particularly pleasurable spot inside his body, and his concentration crumbled quite to bits for a moment. “I have...no idea...”

 

“Best if you don't grab onto it, then,” came the advice as Blaine spun him back around and pressed a quick hard kiss to Kurt's lips before seizing his thighs in an iron grip. “On three, then – one, two...”

 

At three, Kurt braced his back against the wall, ignoring the bits of peeling paper that dug into his skin in favor of enjoying the sensation of being hoisted up so that he could wrap his legs around Blaine's waist. “Are you quite ready for this?” Blaine queried, a broad grin on his face and mischief in his eyes as his slippery cock nudged insouciantly against its desired point of entry. “It is, ah, a lot to take in.”

 

Kurt groaned again, this time more in aggravation at the joke than pleasure, but he tightened his arms around Blaine's neck all the same. “Blaine, this is not a time for jokes.”

 

“No, it's not,” Blaine agreed, his voice suddenly gone husky and dark, and before Kurt could say anything more, he was being lowered gently down onto the hot thickness of Blaine's erection, the fat head easing slowly into his greedy, eager, wanting body that swallowed it in inch by gratifyingly filling inch.

 

Neither man was aware of the presence of Lizzie and Gabriel in the hallway, their curious eyes pinned to the tableau unfolding in the studio. Lizzie in particular was wide-eyed in avaricious interest, her breath coming a bit harshly as she pressed up against Gabriel's side. “Never did I know that it could be like this for two men,” she whispered breathlessly, hips shifting against Gabriel's leg.

 

“Something you've thought about often, then?” Rossetti arched an eyebrow at his companion, observing how the creamy swell of her bosom lifted with her quickening breaths, how her green eyes grew dark as her pupils widened. This was a Lizzie he hadn't seen before, but the more amoral and sensualistic side of his nature was appreciative of it indeed. Carefully, as quietly as he could – not that Kurt or Blaine would have noticed if he'd made an unholy racket, so absorbed were they in each other, their gasps and moans accompanied by the staccato thump of Kurt's back against the wall – he guided Lizzie to stand so that she had an unimpeded view through the cracked open doorway. A lovely, miniscule gasp escaped her parted lips at whatever she saw there, and then another as Gabriel pressed up against her back, twitched a fold of her skirts up, and slid his hand underneath.

 

Her hair caught him in the face as she whipped her head around to gaze at him, startled. “What are you doing?”

 

“Shh. The house matron never comes up here if she can help it, you saw the size of her.” Before Lizzie could object to the slur on the poor woman's figure, Gabriel slipped his fingers into the open seam of her knickers, smirking in satisfaction to find her already damp. She stirred against his probing hand as he whispered into her ear. “If you can stand to keep quiet and still, this can be managed and no one besides us need ever know.”

 

He could tell that Lizzie's mind was warring between propriety and desire, the fear of being caught conflicting with her rising arousal. He also knew that since his fingers were already slipping against the folds of her womanhood, against the nub that never failed to elicit sweet cries of ecstasy, that the battle for sexual gratification was already won, it was merely a matter of letting it play out. “No one comes up here, Lizzie. It's one of Hummel's favorite things about the place...no one bothers him, no one will bother us...I can do all I like to you while you watch and we shall not be disturbed.” He flexed his fingers against her and she leaned back, biting her lip. “You need only remain silent, remain quite still...”

 

When Lizzie relaxed and turned her head back to peep through the cracked door once again, he knew she'd come to the same conclusion and he was free to pleasure her while she kept up her surreptitious spying on Kurt and Blaine. Dropping silently to his knees, Rossetti crawled beneath her skirts and spread open the cream colored linen of her knickers, exposing the thatch of ginger curls nestled between her pale thighs.

 

In another moment he had his mouth upon her and his tongue at work. Overhead, quiet sighs whimpered out of Lizzie's throat, muffled by the hand she was holding over her lips – and he knew she continued to watch even as he licked and sucked at the tart, wet warmth of her center and set her legs a-tremble.

 

All unknowing of what lay just outside his door, in the studio Kurt's world was focused with an iron concentration on the arm wrapped around his waist, the cock that stretched and filled and thrust within him. Blaine was pressing scorching, wet kisses to his neck even as he pushed hard into Kurt, hums of pleasure vibrating warm against Kurt's skin. Between them, Kurt's hard member was jostled and slapped occasionally against Blaine's abdomen. Droplets of his seed that were slowly leaking from the tip would drip free to stick to Blaine's skin, glittering in the firelight as they dried in sticky streaks there. 

 

As amazingly satisfying as every sensation washing through his body felt, Kurt still felt achingly close yet so far away from climax, for he dared not wrap his hand around his straining cock – dared not let go his grip on Blaine's neck as his lover pounded into him. He  _loved_ this, loved the feeling of being possessed and used and held close and of passively taking Blaine apart piece by piece, but he wanted to touch himself so  _badly_ , wanted Blaine to watch him touching himself while being fucked on Blaine's cock.

 

Kurt bit his lip. He felt so  _close_ , so hard and wanting but it was just – there – out of reach – but Blaine felt so  _good_ and when he threw back his head, blowing out a breath to shift his black curls away from where they dipped over his dark honeyed eyes, Kurt felt that he could live quite blissfully for a very long time in the wanton, melting into pleasure expression on his face, in the heated music of his desirous growl, in the fine sheen of sweat gleaming on his brow.

 

He wished he could draw Blaine in this moment.

 

“Hold tight,” Blaine's voice rasped harshly in his ear, and with no more warning than that Kurt was peeled away from the wall and swung about to have his backside perched on the nearby table at which they so frequently ate. In fact a sturdy pottery mug and the remnants of Kurt's dinner still sat upon its surface, only to be swept out of the way by Blaine's arm just before Kurt found himself laid out and Blaine, who had never pulled himself free, hitched Kurt's knees over his shoulders and _shoved_ his hips forward to drive himself far, far more deeply into Kurt than their angle against the wall had allowed, tearing a noisy shout of agonized pleasure from Kurt's mouth before he even knew what was happening.

 

“Wanted...wanted to see you...touch...” Blaine gasped, eyes pleading as he gazed down at Kurt. “Please...”

 

His goal suddenly within reach thanks to his clever, considerate, salacious lover, Kurt wasted no time in sucking all of his fingers wet and slick and wrapping them around his cock, a sigh of happy relief wafting out of his lungs as he pulled at the velvety heft. Blaine seemed to not know where to look, his eyes darting between Kurt's stroking hand and Kurt's face in equal time as he almost helplessly drilled his hips in relentless rhythm into Kurt's body, over and over, the head of his cock brushing and nudging against the little spot that caused Kurt to writhe in bliss, driving him ever closer to the edge.

 

Under the shelter of Lizzie's skirts in the hallway, Rossetti now had two fingers stroking lazily into his lover as his tongue kept up its task, pressing and brushing over the slippery little nub that he held gently captive in his lips. Her muffled cries were still covered by the rhythmic slap of skin on skin and the guttural groans from the men in the studio, yet still were audible to Gabriel even under layers of petticoat and skirt. Lizzie's arousal at the sight of Kurt and Blaine copulating was in its turn arousing Rossetti, and his own erection strained tight against the fastenings of his trousers. He rubbed his free hand over it to ease it a bit, not caring to take himself out and stroke to climax – he wanted to take Lizzie directly home after this, hang having a night out, he needed to bury himself inside of her for many hours as they could possibly stand.

 

A strong, slender hand shot down and pressed his face into the wet warmth of Lizzie's center as she gasped sharply and bent nearly double. Sweet creamy liquid flooded over his tongue and his hair was gripped tightly while her inner walls contracted around his questing fingers. Tiny gasps that descended in intensity spilled in hiccups from her mouth until at last, Lizzie pulled away and slumped quietly to the floor. Gabriel licked his fingers clean and smiled at her, lifting an inquisitive eyebrow. “So. You enjoyed that?”

 

“Not as much as they are,” came the breathless reply, and indeed, it sounded as though things were reaching a much more intense and desperate climax inside of the studio. 

 

On the table, Kurt pulled his legs free and scissored them around Blaine's waist, arresting the other man's movement in its tracks. Blaine almost whined in frustration. “Kurt...!”

 

“Kiss me, oh God, kiss me,” Kurt babbled, his hand stroking his cock with increasing speed. He was so close now and he just wanted - 

 

Blaine's tongue came invading into his mouth, as possessive as it ever and always was, with its unmistakable message that he was staking a claim. He bit down firmly on Kurt's lower lip, tugging it a little and sucking hard on it before thrusting his tongue in again and again as if making up for the movement that his hips could no longer produce. Kurt held one hand at the back of Blaine's neck, the other frantically working his cock over, so close so close so – oh God Blaine's hand came down to join his and he - 

 

Heat ignited and shot through him as he went over, his legs tightening so convulsively around Blaine that they drew the other man's member fully back into Kurt's body and the sudden movement coupled with heated kissing and the sticky warmth of Kurt's orgasm over their stomachs and joined hands seemed to pull Blaine with him, the heat of his seed flooding inside of Kurt while they traded delirious groans into each other's mouths. Blaine's hips snapped and jerked as best they could, clasped as they were in the iron grip of Kurt's legs.

 

They pitched and arched with the lightning of their shared moment, still joined at lower body and hand and mouth as they began to come down, sweat cooling and drying on their skin and desperate, unnameable emotions beginning to twist Kurt's heart.

 

“I don't know whether to depart from London more often or never leave you again,” Blaine mumbled into Kurt's neck as he slumped over, apparently unwilling to pull himself entirely free just yet. “I loathe to be parted from you for even a moment, yet the possibility of another reunion such as this nearly tempts me to take you again, were I not already spent.” He lifted his head a bit to wink and brush his fingertips over Kurt's swollen mouth. Impulsively, Kurt let his tongue dart out to lick over Blaine's hand, tasting the salt of sweat and traces of his own semen there. A broken moan stumbled from Blaine's lips, his head dropping with a sigh to rest on Kurt's chest – and, impossibly, it felt as if Blaine were beginning to stir within him again.

 

“God, if you could only see yourself. You're the most ethereal, sensual creature alive, Kurt Hummel.” Kisses were trailed up Kurt's chest and neck until their lips met once more, slower and less desperately urgent than the ones that had begun their evening. “A man could be tempted into such sins and delights with but a look from you.”

 

As Blaine's sweet words tangled Kurt hopelessly into something he thought achingly might be very like love, Lizzie and Gabriel got to their feet on the stairwell and began to steal away, suddenly feeling oddly as though things had gotten much too intimate for them to intrude upon any longer.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A night at Cremorne Gardens is full of unexpected delights and surprises for Kurt.

* * *

“We should go to the Gardens tonight.”

“Hm?” Kurt frowned at the canvas before him, reaching out with a thumb to smear a bit of yellow paint onto a green leaf, dappling it with a touch of sunshine. He'd given Blaine a brief break from posing in order to concentrate on a particular area of foliage within his fantasy forest glen that had been giving him fits for a solid five days.

“We should go to the Gardens tonight,” Blaine repeated patiently from his indolent sprawl across Kurt's bed. “I know _I've_ left this studio since my return from Cornwall, but I'm not so sure that _you_ have.” He raised his hand to brush his curls out of his eyes. “Kurt, that's not healthy at all, I'm quite certain. Cooped up in here smelling paint all the time and not getting any sunshine and fresh air. Come, let's go out.”

Glancing out the window at the rapidly darkening London sky, Kurt snorted before turning his attention back to the painting, squinting at the clutch of offending leaves. “Sunshine? At this hour? The streetlamps are already coming on.”

“The fresh air then, at least,” was the coaxing reply as Blaine got to his feet and padded over to where Kurt stood by his easel. He wrapped his arms around Kurt's waist and touched their heads together. “Do let's go to Cremorne Gardens, lover. It'll do to relax you.”

“I'm not in need of relaxation, I'm working,” Kurt muttered, trying to ignore Blaine's fingers dancing and tickling across his bare chest, toying with the straps of his braces. He couldn't be sure if he needed more or fewer leaves in this area – and how should they droop? Should they be just stirred as if by an invisible breeze? But then he'd have to repaint Blaine's curls to show as being shifted by the same wind and - 

A gasp shivered sharp out of his mouth as Blaine's hand dipped under the waist of his trousers and began to lightly squeeze at his cock. “I'll make it worth your while,” came the seductive low murmur in Kurt's ear, an almost purring tone of desire fuzzing the edges. When Kurt turned his head, he saw Blaine's eyes gone mischievous, dark and irresistible. “I promise that I will, and you know I do always keep my promises.”

Kurt did know. Knew, too, what Blaine's idea of making the outing worthwhile would be likely to entail, knew intimately that it would be wicked and exciting and toe-curlingly delicious. This knowledge along with Blaine's teasing, roaming hands and naughtily hopeful face was a combination nearly impossible to resist, Kurt realized, feeling his knees sag and his back relax against Blaine's warm, firm chest. “But I have work to do,” he tried gamely, attempting to make one last stand for productivity even as his hips arched into Blaine's grip.

“You can study light and shade at the Gardens,” Blaine whispered, his breath hot as it tickled Kurt's ear. His hand kept up its slow pace, trailing Kurt along the ragged edges of frustration and anticipation in turn. “The gaslamps will be on. Or perhaps I shall give you something else upon which to concentrate, something more befitting a pleasure garden than work...”

Kurt's defenses weakened, then crumbled away entirely when Blaine began to nibble at the back of his neck. His gasp this time was sharper, more desperate. “You win, we'll go, my God -”

And then abruptly, Blaine's questing, grasping hand slipped away and he clapped Kurt on the shoulder before beginning to bustle around the room. “Excellent, excellent,” he chortled blithely as he poked around in search of his clothing. “This shall be such fun, Kurt!”

Kurt could only stand stock still in shock and unrelieved arousal. “I...you...I...” He very nearly wished to weep. His cock was rock hard and felt quite as if it were capable of punching a hole through the canvas on the easel. “Blaine...”

“Oh, lover.” A kiss of apology fluttered across his lips. “I did promise I would make it up to you and I shall. I just can't right now.” Blaine glanced down for a moment before sweeping his eyelashes up to look quite irresistibly beseeching. “We should never leave if I were to finish this, I promise you. For I've such ideas, you can't possibly know, I can only show you...”

In the end, that was the only thing that kept Kurt from carrying out the frustrated impulse to murder his lover on the spot.

* * *

Noise and fireworks were erupting from the concealing gates and bushes of Cremorne Gardens as Kurt and Blaine strolled up, a veritable cacophony of enthusiastic reveling that carried for leagues on the wind. “Ah, we missed the beginning of the fireworks!” Blaine's shoulders actually drooped a bit in disappointment. “I wanted to see it all.”

“It's relatively early yet,” Kurt pointed out, digging a shilling from his coat pocket and handing it to the gatekeeper of the pleasure gardens. “I'm sure there's plenty of fireworks to go.” Not that he really cared at all. He was, after all, only here to humor Blaine. In fact, he hoped perhaps that rain would fall or some other catastrophe would strike so that he had an excuse to drag the model directly back to his studio in order to get started on the hopefully long list of Blaine's carnal bribes for Kurt. 

God, how had it all come to this, how had Kurt gone from awkward virgin to some sort of raging sexual deviant in the space of a few months? Not that he minded, exactly. Sex was immensely pleasurable and it seemed to hurt no one that it was one of only two subjects on his mind at any given time, since he didn't go around advertising it. It was simply that sometimes, he looked back and marveled at the changes wrought in so brief a time. If Kurt wasn't painting, he was blissfully occupied with Blaine in his bed, and he could not recall having ever been happier in his life. 

His happiness, however, had the effect of making him surprisingly morose.

After all, it couldn't last.

This was why he kept himself locked away in the studio with Blaine, fussing over leaves and bushes and things that, if Kurt were honest, were perfectly fine. The painting was, even to his own overly self-critical eye, a good one. It was coming along well.

He didn't want it to end.

Hours of every day were spent twitching and tweaking at the most minute of flaws, scrutinizing every streak of paint that went on the canvas. He was sure Blaine thought him mad, and possibly a brutal taskmaster with all the posing and posing and posing that went on. But his model and lover never once complained, simply adjusted positions as instructed with a smile and a nod, the very epitome of good cheer.

And when it at last fell too dark to work any longer, when even the gaslamps and candles in their wall sconces began to gutter, then Kurt put his messy tools away and washed up as quickly as he could manage before tumbling Blaine over into his bed and indulging in the pleasures of the flesh for as long as they could keep up before falling asleep, sated and with sweaty limbs entwined until Kurt was sure any casual observer would never be able to tell where one man ended and the other began.

He wanted to experience as much of Blaine as he could before the painting was done and they would never see each other again. Was that so very wrong? Kurt had touched the naked flame of desire in his hand, had held it cupped to his heart and felt no pain, only joy and life and passion. He felt truly alive and himself for the first time in his living memory, and it could all be marked down to Blaine, bursting with vitality and carnal energy like no one else on earth. 

Who among men could let go that treasure so easily? 

“I see Miss Siddal, and Gabriel!” Blaine's cheerful exclamation yanked Kurt out of his thoughts, and he looked up to indeed see his friends standing a short distance away in the Gardens. William Hunt and his preferred muse Annie Miller were with them, Hunt looking ill at ease while Annie laughed raucously over an undoubtedly bawdy story she was sharing with the gathering. Blaine's fingers wrapped around Kurt's wrist and tugged. “Let's say hello.”

There was nothing to do but to go along with it, even as the firm grip and pull of Blaine's hand reminded Kurt unmistakably of how his cock had been held earlier, how Blaine's fingers had stroked and squeezed while he whispered persuasively into Kurt's ear. He stirred again at the memory, feeling himself bulge and swell within his trousers while he stumbled along behind Blaine to approach the group of his friends. Now more than ever he wanted to turn around and return straight home, an impulse that only strengthened when Annie glanced down at his crotch and let out another noisy laugh.

“Oi, sweet'eart, the rules say yer not to bring weapons into the Gardens, innit?” Her broad working girl's tones were rough with amusement as she stepped forward to place a noisy, smacking kiss on Kurt's cheek. “You'll be wanting to put that away, love, you will.”

“I don't know what you mean, Miss Miller,” Kurt demurred, feeling his face flush hotly while Gabriel cackled in the background. 

“Careful, Hummel, you know Annie would be all too happy to explain in full detail,” he snorted out in mock-concern, slinging an arm each around Kurt and Blaine's shoulders. “And I think if you turn any more red you'll rival the fireworks in the sky for brightness! You need a drink in you before she speaks again. Or better, let's find that little hidey-hole you were talking about, Hunt.” Rossetti glanced back over his shoulder where the other artist was courteously offering his arm to Lizzie. “I want some of that hashish of yours.”

“I didn't know you could still find it in yers ta blush with what I figger you get up to, Kurt.” Annie popped up on Kurt's other side, grinning cheerfully while she hissed in his ear. “Even Millais doesn't turn as red as you do an' I know for a fact he's still not been launched. I don't think 'e even knows 'e can do for 'imself, if ya know what I mean and I'm pretty sure that ya do.” Her laugh screeched over the explosions of the fireworks. “So tell me, this pretty model o' yers, has he got a massive cock, then? Oo, I just bet he does. Tell me all about it, love.”

He'd had no idea he and Annie were such great friends. Helplessly, Kurt watched as Gabriel pulled Blaine along ahead, laughing over some shared joke. Behind them, Lizzie and Hunt had their heads together and were quietly discussing her latest sketches. And Kurt was alone with Annie and her too-eager questions.

“Mind, I don't suppose I'd 'ave too much of a problem takin' it like you do if the price is right,” she was musing, strawberry blonde curls spilling over her shoulders and capacious bosom while she nodded thoughtfully. “An' at least you don't have to worry about getting up the pole! Pretty mouth on that one, too, I bet you like it when he sucks you off.”

Kurt honestly felt as if he were going to die. Why could he and Blaine not have stayed safely home and chased each other around the studio all night? Going out in public only got people into trouble. He glanced down at the unrepentantly bawdy woman walking beside him. “Are you not meant to be having lessons in elocution and manners, Miss Miller?”

“Aye, but it's worth not being a lady to see the look on your face.” She winked one mischievous sea-green eye and giggled at him. “Only you can act like you're still a virgin even when we all know you've 'ad that one in yer bed for months, Kurt Hummel! Ya do know sex is supposed to be relaxin', dontcha? Maybe yer not having enough of it.” 

_I beg to differ_ , he almost snapped out, but just managed to keep the words behind his teeth. For one thing, it was none of her business. For another, he _didn't_ think they were having enough of it, even though if they had any _more_ of it, they'd quite likely find themselves unable to walk without wincing sooner rather than later. “I refuse to dignify that with a response,” he finally replied tightly, keeping his gaze focused firmly, if discreetly, on the swell of Blaine's backside in his camel colored trousers while his lover strolled ahead.

“Well, and you don't have to, yer snit is answer enough,” Annie cackled, squeezing his arm and giving him another smacking kiss before relenting and bouncing ahead to shove playfully at Rossetti, who was standing by what looked to be a darkened grotto and beckoning for everyone to follow him in.

“This should be secluded enough, I'd think,” he remarked before vanishing into the shadows with Annie in tow. Right behind him, Blaine glanced over his shoulder to flash a wink and bright smile at Kurt before following.

Hunt trotted up and handed Lizzie off into the entrance. “Come along, Hummel, haven't got all night,” he admonished mildly. “Nor have I enough hashish to share with everyone here – so come inside or for heaven's sake, move away from the area so as to not draw attention.”

Continuing to wish that he were snugly tucked up in his bed at the studio with Blaine was doing absolutely no good whatsoever, so with a sigh and a shake of his suddenly aching head, Kurt ducked in and followed Hunt into the shadowy grotto.

If he couldn't have sex or painting, he supposed he might as well plump for oblivion.

* * *

“...no, no, no.” Rossetti was shaking his head with considerable vehemence, his eyes bloodshot and hair wild. “Dickens has _nothing_ at all of substance to say, he loathes us one and all. It's _Ruskin_ whose opinion matters on this, Maniac.”

Hunt rolled his eyes and waved his hand, being careful not to drop the hashish pipe from which they'd all been smoking. “Yes, but Dickens is the voice everyone hears.”

“Only because he has a platform in the papers, those arse-kissing journalists _love_ a controversy.” Gabriel slumped back against Lizzie's bosom, sulking. “And they don't like me either.”

Kurt wasn't sure how much more of this he could take. When Gabriel was drunk or otherwise intoxicated, he began exhorting his colleagues to rise up against England's art establishment to a tiresome degree, seemingly forgetting that such subversion was at the forefront of their minds every _day_. That it was why they'd founded the Brotherhood.

Well. Perhaps he hadn't forgotten. This was Gabriel; he liked to hear himself talk. And he absolutely _loved_ to discuss how very, very persecuted he was as an artist and a man. It was his favorite topic.

Blaine had been bent in earnest conversation with Lizzie for the last hour, the two of them talking about God knew what while Rossetti complained and fussed. Annie, rather intelligently, had wandered off as soon as Gabriel had opened his mouth and said, “God, I hate Charles Dickens.”

Kurt quite wished that he had followed her sensible example.

Movement at the corner of his eye caught his attention, and Kurt glanced over to see Blaine leaning down to catch up the little hashish pipe from Hunt. His nimble fingers deftly lit the burner and let it smoke a moment before he moved to inhale, cloudy smoke wreathing and dancing around his head. The lone gaslamp in the grotto cast its shadow down over his face, making him look just slightly sinister while he breathed in the sweet smoke. With the smoke halo and his curls twining a bit out of control in the mugginess of the night, for once Blaine resembled Pan more than Apollo, all mischievous satyr rather than sensual god.

He exhaled with a sigh after a long moment, tipping his head back and letting smoke stream into the air. His eyes cracked open and he caught Kurt watching him. “Again?” he offered, holding the metal tipped tube out to Kurt. They'd both partaken generously of Hunt's hashish, letting the smoke fill their lungs and the euphoria wind gently through their minds. But Kurt had smoked his fill, leaving him to feel quite pleasantly fluid, only a bit bored now that Rossetti was banging on about how his latest poems had been panned by the critics. He shook his head at Blaine and scooted to sit closer so that he could whisper in his lover's ear.

“I'd really like to -”

“How goes your painting, Hummel?” Hunt reached over and plucked the hash pipe back out of Blaine's hands, leaning back to light it again. “God, it's been months since you stole my model from me -”

“You _fired_ me,” Blaine interjected archly, leaning against Kurt. Hunt ignored him.

“Months, and we've hardly seen you at all in that time. Seems like you ought to have some sort of work to show for it by now.” He inhaled deeply, holding the smoke in and his superior, inquiring gaze on Kurt for several long moments. When he exhaled, the smoke hit Kurt like a punch to the face. “So? Are you even working or are you simply...”

“He's working.” Again it was Blaine who spoke, and the sharpness in his voice made Kurt blink in confusion. “Every day, harder than I've ever seen any painter work. And it's good.”

Hunt snorted. “As if you're any judge, Anderson, you're his model. And you're sleeping with him, that doesn't precisely make you unbiased.”

“That doesn't mean I lack the capacity for good aesthetic judgment.” Blaine's chin was tilted stubbornly into the air, his eyes flashing. “I am capable of knowing the difference between hack work and a masterpiece. To see Kurt work is as if watching God paint light directly onto the canvas. It's raw, but with a natural grace and depth that I feel most modern painters lack.” He snatched the hash pipe back from Hunt and began to raise it to his lips. “Including you.”

Hunt's eyes narrowed in anger. “Why, you -” 

“Christ, I'm famished,” Rossetti suddenly barked, jumping to his feet and nearly setting the grotto on fire when he accidentally dropped the lit match with which he had been toying. “Who's a man got to fuck to get his hands on some ham and egg pie around here?” What had been left of the languid camaraderie of the grotto now well and thoroughly demolished, the dissolute artist let out a noisy belch and dragged Lizzie to her feet, crashing through the bushes. “Let's find some sort of supper! Come along, you lot!”

Hunt cast a glare at Blaine, but evidently decided not to pursue their argument. “I'm off to find Annie again,” he growled, reclaiming his pipe and following Rossetti out. Kurt and Blaine were alone, then, with Blaine still leaning his head on Kurt's shoulder. Kurt still felt his head reeling with hashish and astonishment at Blaine's outburst.

“What was that about?” he wondered aloud, pulling back to look at Blaine. “Are you insane, talking to Hunt like that?”

“I don't like him,” was the reply, a tiny surly frown creasing Blaine's brow. “Quite apart from the fact that he fired me, I didn't care for him speaking of you as if you were as lazy and dissolute as Rossetti.” He pushed up to his feet and reached down to aid Kurt up as well. “You're better than both of them.”

Kurt didn't know how to process all of this. “You can't know that. And Hunt's right, I am taking too long, I really -”

“You're taking as long as you need.” A swift, sweet kiss was pressed to Kurt's lips, then Blaine's finger was there to keep him silent. The frown had disappeared, replaced with earnest, quiet assurance. “And I can know that. I'm not an ignorant model, Kurt, I am acquainted with art and I do have an appreciation for it. You are good. You shall only get better with the time and care that you are taking to produce your _Apollo_ , and I am proud to be a part of it, no matter how long it takes.”

 _When you say things like this it makes me love you more and never wish to let you go,_ Kurt thought in anguish, holding a sigh captive in his throat. He gently grasped Blaine's hand in his and moved it away from his lips. “Let us go back to the studio,” he asked quietly, taking care to keep love and pleading alike out of his voice, in fact trying to make his tone as light and carefree as he could. “So that I might show my appreciation of your defense.”

Blaine smiled sweetly and kissed him again. “But I am not ready yet, Kurt. I think I should certainly like an ice cream, at least. Please?” His broadening grin was bright and boyish, hope lighting his eyes. “I do love ice cream, and it's so warm out tonight.”

He was impossible to resist. Kurt suppressed a sigh and put a bright smile on. “Right, well, then we'll stroll and find you an ice cream.” He felt like a cranky hermit who was no fun at all and still desperately wanted to be home, but he couldn't bring himself to call a halt to it if it made Blaine look so happy.

Unfair that one man could be both mouth-wateringly attractive and yet endearingly adorable, and frequently all at the same time.

They emerged into the crowds thronging the Gardens, chatter and bustle filling the air now that the fireworks had ended. A string quartet had set up in a nearby gazebo and played sprightly tunes that set many a couple dancing in the moon and lamp light, happy smiles and laughter interlacing with each musical flourish and swish of heavy skirts to create a miniature sort of symphony of their own. Perfume and pomade scented the spring air with a lighter hand than the offerings of the food merchants, which presented everything from meat pies to the ice cream Blaine sought.

“It's a lovely night,” Blaine remarked happily, rubbing his hands together as he peered around. He flashed a smile back at Kurt. “Thank you so much for coming out with me, Kurt. It wouldn't have been nearly as fun without you.”

 _I like to see you smile_ , Kurt thought all unexpectedly, and his heart ached with it. “Of course. Though I do seem to recall promises of untold delights in return for my cooperation.” 

“So shall there be.” Blaine's wink was saucy and dark with mischief. “Patience is a virtue.” He turned and strode off, making a beeline for a woman holding a dripping tray of ice creams in glasses. In short order, he'd returned with two, shoving one at Kurt as they paced over to a quieter area of the gardens. “Have dessert with me, lover.”

Kurt eyed the cold glass dubiously before taking it, wincing as the cold condensation chilled his hand. “This wasn't exactly what I had thought you'd had in mind, Blaine.”

“Patience is a _virtue_ ,” came the teasing reiteration before Blaine lifted the spoon from his glass to let his tongue dart out to slowly lick at the sweet confection that coated it – and suddenly, he was no longer adorable and boyish, but all man and a walking personification of desire.

Kurt's mouth went quite abruptly as dry as a desert.

Blaine traced the tip of his tongue through the melting hummock of creamy strawberry sweetness on his spoon, then went back over the treat with the broad pink flat of it to smooth out the valley he'd left behind. A rivulet of pale cream dribbled down the edge of the spoon's bowl, and Blaine had to move quickly to catch it, letting his tongue slip carefully to gather up each wayward droplet.

“Oh, God,” Kurt whispered, his own ice cream melting in its glass in his hand, quite utterly forgotten.

The next spoonful went directly into Blaine's mouth with no suggestive licking – but he closed his eyes and hummed a positively obscene sound of delight as he swallowed his mouthful down, and Kurt's knees nearly buckled because it was exactly as Blaine looked and sounded every morning when he woke Kurt up by the simple expedient of throwing back the coverlet on the bed and sucking Kurt's cock into his mouth. Kurt's trousers suddenly got very, very uncomfortably tight once again, and he couldn't help the tiny broken moan that slipped out of his throat.

Blaine slowly pulled the spoon back out from between lips made glossy and sticky with strawberries and cream. “You haven't touched your dessert, Kurt,” he pointed out, eyes wide in an exaggerated parody of innocence. “Is something wrong?”

“You're doing that on purpose,” Kurt croaked, not sure if he wanted to kiss or kill Blaine in that moment. “You are a cruel, cruel man, Blaine Anderson.”

“Poor Kurt.” Blaine batted his eyelashes as he scooped another spoonful of ice cream out of his glass. This time, however, he held it out to Kurt. “Open your mouth.”

“I don't want any -” he began peevishly, but one raised eyebrow from Blaine had him capitulating, and he obediently opened up to accept the sweet, delicious treat. It was tasty, he had to admit as it slipped coolly over his tongue and down his throat.

“I _am_ doing this on purpose,” came Blaine's explanation in a voice much more calm than Kurt felt he'd any right to feel. “You are right about that.”

“But why?” Kurt only just held back from outright wailing. His cock was so very hard and he'd wanted Blaine for so many hours now, it seemed, and it was all so very not _fair_. 

Blaine's eyes had suddenly taken on that familiar dark cast that told Kurt that he was just as hard in his trousers as Kurt, was teetering on the precipice of losing control. “Do you see that cluster of bushes just over my shoulder, where it's very dark and very secluded?”

Kurt let his eyes flick to the indicated section of garden. “Yes.”

“I'm going to take you over into that little alcove there, and I am going to open your trousers and I am going to suck your cock,” came the low whisper, rather incongruously calm and even given the message it was delivering. “But we must work quickly, for we cannot be caught, and I would have you come down my throat before we leave these gardens.”

Drawing back, Kurt felt his eyes widen in shock. “We cannot. If we should be...”

Jail at best, death at worst, if they were caught. He knew it but could not say it.

“Hence the need to work quickly.” Mischief sparkled again in the amber depths of Blaine's eyes, belying the danger of the situation he proposed. “What's life without a bit of risk, lover?” He leaned in closely. “I rather find my cock grows harder at the prospect of danger, Kurt, don't you?”

Every time he thought Blaine couldn't surprise him more... “I - ”

Blaine pulled another dripping spoonful of ice cream from his glass and, with agonizing slowness and never taking his eyes off of Kurt's, licked it spotlessly clean, sucking it dry between his lips as soon as the last droplet was consumed. “Are you trying to tell me that at this very moment, your cock isn't begging for release? That were I to take it into my mouth, you would not be near ready to spill yourself down my throat?” He took one step to get even closer and now his throaty whisper burned at Kurt's ear. “What if I were to tell you that when I take to my knees before you, I will take myself in hand and even as I taste you, I shall be working to my own climax?”

And there it was. Kurt was now up against the very limit he could stand and danger was almost the last thing on his mind – now he was erect and straining and needed Blaine's lips on his cock as quickly as possible. “Now,” he groaned, glancing around to be sure they were still mostly alone. He snatched Blaine's nearly empty ice cream glass out of his hand and set it on a nearby bench along with his own untouched dessert. “Now, Blaine, please.”

He felt his wrist seized in an iron grip and let himself be dragged across the grass into the darkened alcove that had been created by a cluster of box hedges. The foliage was thick, dense – no one would be able to see inside, would have to be practically on top of them to see what was going on. Which was a risk, especially as late in the evening as it was drawing on to be. Now was the time when couples paired off for surreptitious trysts, when giggles and sighs could be heard from grottoes and bushes all over the gardens. Everyone would be searching for somewhere to go.

Clandestine murmurs filtered through the leaves as Kurt's trousers were yanked open and Blaine's knees hit the ground. “Try to be silent and still,” cautioned a low whisper before Blaine's warm, wet lips encircled Kurt's cock and began with no preamble to suck as if his life depended on it.

Lamplight trickled in to illuminate Blaine's eyes as Kurt glanced down, biting hard on his lip to keep from saying anything. The rustle of cloth told him that Blaine was indeed stroking his own cock in rhythm with his fellating of Kurt's, head and hand bobbing with a firm, steady speed. Ah, God, Annie had indeed been so very right – Kurt loved this more than anything, the soft warmth of Blaine's eager mouth on his member was a pleasure incomparable to any other sensation on earth or, he was certain, in heaven. Kurt let his hands slide to touch Blaine's head, his fingers to creep and thread through the soft curls and pull a little. He worked to resist the urge to fuck his cock down Blaine's throat, so aroused was he and so in need of release after all of the teasing.

“Do it.” Blaine's mouth pulled off, making Kurt hold back a groan of frustration. “Do it. I know you're trying to hold back, don't.”

Did Blaine know what he was asking? “Blaine -”

“Don't hold back, Kurt.” The whisper rasped low and rough, and Kurt heard Blaine's hand stroking harder on his cock. “Please. In fact...” Blaine's free hand came up and pulled Kurt's out of his hair, bringing it to rest against his cravat. “Pull, Kurt, please. Pull hard on it.”

He didn't even give Kurt time to protest or think, taking his cock back into his mouth and erasing all rational thought in seconds. It was so abrupt that Kurt's fingers curled and tightened involuntarily, pulling the cravat close around Blaine's neck. Instantly, a groan curled up out of Blaine's throat, vibrating his mouth and Kurt's cock all at once. It made Kurt's hips jerk forward, shoving himself hard into Blaine's mouth and unleashing another broken, desperate muffled groan. 

Kurt let his fingers pull and twist the cravat, drawn irresistibly by the groaning and slick wetness of Blaine's mouth around his cock. He had to stuff his other hand into his mouth and bite down to keep from shouting. All around them, voices murmured and they could be caught out at any moment and still Blaine's mouth was hot and pulling, his eyes wide and dark as he rolled them up to look at Kurt between helpless moans. 

And indeed, as wound up as they had both been by Blaine's trick with the ice cream, it was not long before they were both stifling their cries of release, Kurt climaxing with hard jerks of his hips as he felt himself pouring hot down Blaine's throat, knowing that at his feet, Blaine was spilling his own seed across the soft green grass of the garden. It seemed now with the excitement of danger and Blaine's desire to have his breath cut short while he sucked Kurt off that Kurt would never stop coming, _could_ never stop and more, did not _want_ to stop. He wanted to remain suspended in this moment of fire and delight forever, lost in an endless loop of pleasure with the most beautiful man he knew or ever wanted to know.

Alas, of course, it was not to be. Kurt's fingers relaxed and slipped free their grip on Blaine's cravat, and Blaine slumped back, taking deep breaths as he restored first Kurt, then himself to rights. Kurt bit his lip. “Are you...are you all right? Did I...”

“I'm quite fine, Kurt.” Holding up his hand, Blaine waited for Kurt to take it before pulling himself to his feet and leaning in for a quick, hard kiss. “Home. Now. I want to show you how very fine I am, lover.”

Dazed and intrigued, Kurt trotted along as Blaine pulled him towards the gates of the pleasure gardens, his mind still on Blaine's moans of pleasure. “How many more tricks have you got up your sleeve, Blaine?”

Blaine glanced back, dropping a mischievous wink over his shoulder. “More than can be counted in a lifetime, and I plan on showing you every single one of them.”

“If there's more than can be counted in a lifetime,” Kurt pointed out, clapping his hand to keep his hat from flying off as Blaine picked up the pace, “then how do you propose to show me every single one of them?”

“I shall do it,” floated back the amused, determined response, “or I shall die trying. You'll not be getting rid of me any time soon, Kurt Hummel.”

Sweet God in Heaven, but Kurt wished that that statement could be one of Blaine's unbreakable promises.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In binding ties and the freedom of surrender, Kurt learns valuable lessons.

* * *

“You want me to do _what_?”

Blaine continued to patiently hold out the handful of soft rope he had been trying to hand to Kurt for several minutes. His eyes twinkled with amusement at Kurt's consternation. “I would really quite like it if you were to tie me to your bed and have your wicked, wicked way with me,” he informed Kurt, voice ripe with cheerful lascivity. “Please?”

As difficult as Kurt often found it to resist anything Blaine asked of him, this was something he hadn't ever expected, and it was well beyond his comprehension. “I don't understand _why_.” Slowly, Kurt reached out and plucked one of the lengths of rope from Blaine's hand, running the ends of it between his fingers as if it were Blaine's hair. “You won't be able to _do_ anything. Where's the fun in that?”

“That _is_ the fun.” Blaine's face softened from its impish, teasing grin to something altogether more affectionate. “I told you that I have many tricks up my sleeve. Did you not believe me?”

“Well, of course I did.” Prickly splinters of hemp woven in with the cotton bit a little at his fingers as he touched the rope. Blaine was full of surprises, and each day with him was a new adventure, which was quite nearly the only certainty about him. “But I was not expecting this.” 

Blaine's shoulders lifted in an easy shrug. “I daresay there's much you haven't expected from me, lover.” The twinkle in his eyes and lightness of his voice assured Kurt that he was still teasing. “Are you already tired of trying new things?”

Kurt kept toying with the rope. “It's not that. It's that I don't understand it. You want to be helpless. Unable to touch me or yourself or...how is that enjoyable for you?”

Several long, silent moments passed while Blaine studied Kurt's face. Kurt tried not to fidget under the scrutiny. At last, Blaine spoke. “You didn't understand the other night, either, did you? At the Gardens?”

Mutely, Kurt shook his head, gathering his thoughts as he pulled the rope through his fingers. “I was afraid that I had hurt you,” he finally admitted, glancing up at Blaine through the veil of his eyelashes. “You had that red mark on your neck for days afterward.”

“I liked that red mark, Kurt.” Moving swiftly, Blaine came to kneel by the chair in which Kurt sat, reaching his hands out to still the agitated movement of Kurt's fingers. “I liked how I got it, I liked that you were the one who made it, I liked that for two days afterward it burned and stung and reminded me of what we had done.”

Kurt felt his brows knit together in a frown. “You like...pain?”

“I liked _that_ pain,” Blaine corrected. He paused, suddenly looking uncertain for the first time in Kurt's memory. It was a disconcerting look, making him appear young and vulnerable. “Does that...Kurt, does that bother you?”

Biting his lip, Kurt considered the question carefully. “It bothers me to hurt you, to _cause_ you pain,” he answered eventually, choosing his words with care. “It doesn't bother me that you _like_ it. But I still fail to understand it.”

Blaine's face cleared into a thoughtful expression, and he nodded. “I keep forgetting...how _new_ you are to all of this,” he mused, rubbing his thumbs over Kurt's knuckles. “You have been such an equal from the start, so sensual and quick to learn. It is surprisingly easy to forget that not very many months ago, you were a virgin.”

Kurt felt his cheeks burn. “I'm sorry.”

“ _No._ Don't.” Blaine reached up to touch his cheek and gently guided Kurt to meet his gaze. Kurt saw nothing in the amber depths of the eyes he so loved but compassion and a touch of chagrin. “It means nothing but that somehow, I'd never thought we'd have this conversation. That we'd just fall into this as naturally and as passionately as everything else. It seems I hardly know where to begin.”

 _Oh._ “Well,” Kurt began, taking a deep breath as he sorted through the questions in his mind. “You could start with the other night. The...with your cravat. Why did you want me to do that?”

This made Blaine chuckle softly. “Well, lover, I can't be quite certain how it escaped your notice that night, but I find the lack of air to be stimulating, as it were.” He raised an eyebrow and chuckled again at Kurt's blush, running his thumb over a burning cheekbone. “It induces some sort of euphoric state, and makes one's climax that much more...well... _more_.” A sheepish look crossed his face. “It's difficult to put into words.”

But Kurt thought he understood, at least a bit. It felt good, so Blaine liked it. That made sense. “But the pain? It must have hurt, but you said you liked that it hurt.”

“So do you seem to,” came the cheeky reply. “We mark each other, Kurt, with scratches and bruises in the heat of desire. Surely you've noticed that at such times, certain pain is quite pleasurable. And you do not seem to mind the results in the days that follow either. Do you?”

He had to admit he did not. 

Blaine sighed and smiled a bit ruefully. “We don't have to. I just thought...”

His wistful expression gave Kurt pause. On the one hand, he balked at the notion of Blaine being helpless, an unequal participant in their lovemaking.

On the other, Blaine was _inviting_ him to do this. And Kurt wanted to do everything possible with Blaine before their inevitable parting. _Apollo And His Lyre_ was mere days from completion, and then what? Blaine would have no reason to still want to come around. Kurt did not at all believe that his appeal was such that a man like Blaine would want to be around him if he weren't being paid for his time. Yes, he said the most marvelous things, but he was being kind, Kurt was certain. After all, he was merely a poor artist with no family, few assets, a talent he'd allowed until recently to be stifled by his own modesty, and he was newly come yet to sensuality and lovemaking. Who would want to remain in his company unless they were obligated to do so?

Shoving his darkening thoughts aside, Kurt returned to concentrating carefully on Blaine's request. He pictured Blaine, tied up, at his mercy and whim, ready to accept anything Kurt wanted to do with him. Trusting that Kurt would take heed and stop if Blaine felt it was too much. Having faith that Kurt would make sure it was pleasurable for them both. For all these months, Blaine had been his teacher, leading him through his journey of sexual awakening and exploration. Now he was asking for permission to put himself into _Kurt's_ hands, to let Kurt seize the reins for the first time. And Blaine _wanted_ this. He wanted that helplessness, to trust in the fragile cushion of faith, to surrender.

 _Surely these are not the desires and actions of a man who remains with you out of obligation_ , whispered a hopeful little voice that Kurt immediately quashed. He'd been let down by hope too often in his young life. He wished only to focus on now, today, on Blaine standing before him. Blaine, the man who had given so much and only now – for the first time, Kurt realized – was asking for something of his own pleasure and benefit. How could Kurt _not_ want to give him all of the joy his new-found knowledge could provide?

Kurt tilted his head up and gazed upon his beloved in silence. “What do you find in this bondage?” he finally asked, pulling the ropes taut in his hands. Tension popped and crackled between them as lightning, heightening the anticipation that seemed always to surround and accompany them now. And on stretched the silence as Kurt waited for a response.

At last it came, simple, real, unadorned. “Freedom.”

Simple, in that it was one word, yet so complex in all that it could mean. Kurt dared not think too closely on it.

Tossing the lengths of rope on the bed, he stood, reaching forward to seize Blaine by the lapels of his shirt, dragging close for a kiss that took the breath of both men away. Blaine's fingers laced up and through Kurt's hair, tangling together at the nape of his neck and _pulling_ , just a little, just enough to cause a delicious ache to curl his toes and send heat rushing down his spine directly to his cock.

At last, Kurt drew slightly back, catching Blaine's full lower lip in his teeth and biting down, enjoying the sucking gasp this earned him in return. “All right,” he mumbled against his lover's mouth, guiding him carefully backwards towards the bed and yanking his shirt open. In a matter of moments the shirt was discarded on the floor and Kurt was running his hands over the dark, fine hair dusted across Blaine's chest, touching his fingers to Blaine's heartbeat and curling his fingernails lightly into the skin, leaving tiny red marks. “We'll...I'll...yes. We'll do this.” He swallowed and shoved Blaine gently back to sit on the bed. It took a long, deep breath before Kurt could find the nerve to command, “Hands around the bars.”

Blaine's eyes gleamed with eager anticipation as he obediently shoved himself back up against the brass bars of the bed, wrapping his fingers around the railings. “I am all yours,” he whispered, voice gone low and dark as the blanket of night that surrounded them, in contrast to the light in his gaze.

Oh, how Kurt so wished that to be true.

Chewing now on his own bottom lip, Kurt surveyed the half-naked man before him, assessing with his artist's eye the best way to do this. “Would you mind quite terribly,” he began hesitantly, only to be interrupted by Blaine sitting up and shaking his head in vehemence.

“Order me.”

Taken aback, Kurt stepped back a pace before regaining equilibrium. “Come again?”

“Order me.” Blaine slipped back off the bed and prowled over to Kurt, glancing up from under his lashes. “Tell me what to do. Don't ask me.”

“I...” Again, the thought of having Blaine completely at his mercy made Kurt's mouth go dry, his knees soft, his cock utterly hard. Tossing his head back, Kurt sucked another desperately needed breath into his nose, feeling it flow down his throat and loosen the tension that had stolen his voice. “I want you to remove my clothing.”

“As you wish.” Bowing his head, Blaine knelt and set himself to the task of removing Kurt's boots, taking great care to line them neatly up side by side at the foot of the bed. Then stockings, folding them together and placing them inside of the nearest boot.

Trousers followed, each button undone slowly and so, so very cautiously, as if Blaine was trying terribly hard not to touch Kurt. And Kurt realized this must be the case, that Blaine would not touch him unless he were asked – no, ordered – to do so. It was Kurt who was was truly in charge, his commands or lack thereof as binding as any ropes.

Would that he could tie Blaine's heart to his own so easily.

Clearing his throat, he reached down and ran his fingers through the downy softness of Blaine's curls. “Blaine,” he murmured, rough as brick and soft as silk, “touch me.”

Blaine looked up, hands stilled in the motion of pulling Kurt's trousers down. “Tell me how,” he replied simply, keeping his eyes locked on Kurt's as he returned to his task. “Tell me what you want. How you want it.”

 _Oh, sweet God_ , Kurt thought, biting harder on his lower lip to keep back the groan that threatened to snarl its way out of his chest. He was terrified of this new responsibility, yet aroused as much by Blaine's deference as he ever had been by his easy, confident dominance. He hardly knew where to begin, what to ask, how to put into words what he wanted. His cheeks flushed rosy with the blush that still plagued him and revealed his uncertainty as clearly as an article in a newspaper. “I...I want...” Oh, it was like being a virgin _all over again_.

“It's all right, Kurt,” Blaine encouraged, smiling with all the warmth and kindness that Kurt so loved. “Please. Tell me anything you want me to do. You can be honest with me.”

But could he be in control? Could he take the lead? That was what was giving Kurt pause, this shift in their dynamic. Blaine had always been willing to please Kurt, that was never a doubt, but never had he been this... _subservient_ about it. It was a shifting ground beneath Kurt's careful feet, something to which he had to adjust.

He focused on Blaine's calm, patient face, on the feel of his hair under Kurt's hand. The touchstone in all of this, of course, _was_ Blaine. Confident, adventurous, joyous Blaine, the same Blaine Kurt liked to wake up next to every morning he possibly could. It was still Blaine there kneeling at his feet, oddly confident even in this subservience, and so trusting, and really, all Kurt had to do was to conquer his own reticence, because Blaine was right _there_ and willing to do anything he wanted if he could _just get the words out_.

“Plea...no.” Kurt shook his head and took a steadying breath. He was getting a little dizzy from all of his calming efforts! This would never do. He simply had to fling himself into this. Right. Yes. He tightened his grip in Blaine's hair and nodded, just once, sharply. “Blaine, I want you to open your mouth and suck my cock.”

As soon as the word _cock_ had left his lips, Kurt's was extracted from his undergarments and engulfed by Blaine's warm, wet, voraciously sucking mouth. He would _never_ tire of this, ever, it would always remain his most favorite thing of everything he and Blaine did. Kurt went nearly blind with the pleasure of it, his fingers tugging at Blaine's curls and causing, in turn, those delicious muffled moans of delight that sent vibrations up and down his shaft. Nothing, nothing _ever_ could be as marvelous as this.

Except, if Blaine were to be believed, the freedom of bondage. Which reminded Kurt that tonight was not to be about himself.

With regret, Kurt pulled Blaine back, holding in his bereft sigh as the cool air of the studio licked over the damp skin of his hard member. “Continue removing my clothing, then disrobe and return to your position on the bed,” he instructed, tilting his chin up and waiting for Blaine to strip them both naked. Which was now done with considerable alacrity, Kurt noted in amusement as he found himself nude in record time and admiring Blaine's fantastic and now equally unclothed backside as his lover crawled back into the bed. 

Well. There was nothing else for it. Hoping his uncertainty wasn't embarrassingly over-obvious, Kurt paced towards the bed and picked up the lengths of rope, twining them around his own wrists while he considered Blaine again, thinking about the things Blaine did that pleased him the best, for he wanted this to be as enjoyable as Blaine was trusting he would make it. “I'm going to tie you down now,” he advised, keeping a careful eye on Blaine and praying he didn't get anything wrong. 

Blaine nodded, a tiny, content smile on his lips. “All right.”

“I'd like you be on your knees, facing the head of the bed.” Since this was a night to try new and adventurous things, he'd decided to see what it might be like to take Blaine from behind. It was something they'd done a handful of times before, but never with Kurt taking the lead. In fact, he'd only been in this position at all two or three times before, because he really just liked having Blaine inside of him so very entirely much. It was something of an addiction for him.

And that was when all the pieces truly fell into place for Kurt, the scales falling from his eyes as he realized it. He loved Blaine's confidence and dominance – it was as much a part of their sexual activity as actually being intimate with each other. He loved Blaine's eagerness to share his knowledge, at how bringing Kurt pleasure seemed to in turn heighten his pleasure as well. He liked how Blaine felt on him, in him, around him – all of it was immensely arousing and wonderful.

Well, of course he could do this. No matter how it would hurt later, Kurt _loved_ Blaine and therefore he wanted Blaine to feel just as happy and fulfilled during this night as he himself always did every other night. And if Kurt liked being dominated without even quite knowing that was part of what he enjoyed, then oh, oh _yes_ , he could do this for Blaine, who _knew_ what he wanted and whose enjoyment would be enhanced a thousandfold for it.

Suddenly, reticence fell away and Kurt's singular focus was on making Blaine very, _very_ happy indeed.

“Put your hands through the bars and clasp them,” he began, seeing where he would go with this now. Blaine obeyed immediately, and Kurt slipped in under his arm, snuggling back against his chest and facing the brass bedstead. With care – not too tightly, not too loose – he wound the rope around Blaine's wrists and the bar of the bed that they flanked, binding all together and tying a sturdy knot. “Pull back,” he directed, and Blaine did. The knot didn't loosen. Good. Kurt squirmed and turned around to face Blaine now, placing his hands on either side of his lover's head and kissing him hard, tongue darting to taste the softness of Blaine's mouth, to claim and plunder as thoroughly as Blaine had done to him the first time they had kissed. By the time he pulled away to level his gaze on Blaine's once more, they were both breathing in harsh, rasping gasps, chests rising and falling in tandem against each other, and the knowledge that he could _do_ this to Blaine quite sent Kurt's confidence spiraling to lofty heights.

“I'm going to fuck you now,” he declared, thoroughly pleased at how Blaine bobbed his head in a wordless nod, eyes huge. The epithet felt odd on his tongue, yet he couldn't deny the thrill that shivered down his spine when it was voiced. Kurt felt deliciously naughty and alive all at once. “I'm going to kiss you, and lick you, and touch you and fuck you, do you understand?”

Blaine looked positively dazzled with delight. “O...oh yes.”

Without another word, Kurt leaned in to press their bodies close together and kissed Blaine again, wondering if there was any possible way in the world to get enough of this alone, the smell and the taste and the _heat_ of Blaine, even if they had all the time in the world, would that be long enough?

His fingers twisted into the curls at the base of Blaine's neck and, as Blaine had done to him earlier, Kurt tugged, just a single firm clench and slight pull, to see what would happen.

A heavy groan ripped out of Blaine's throat as he broke their kiss to lean into the pull, his member stiffening against Kurt's thigh, burning hot in its desire. His arms jerked as he tried to react as he usually did when Kurt did this, to wrap Kurt in his arms and tumble him to the bed or floor or table or wherever they happened to be.

But, of course, he couldn't. Blaine's eyes widened and he let out a tiny, embarrassed chuckle. “It has been some time since I've done this,” he admitted, shaking his head. “I have to remember that I can't...”

“Touch me, grab me, or stop me,” Kurt finished, knowing his eyes were alight with mischief as he reached out and clamped his fingers around Blaine's hips, pulling their bodies so close together a breath could not have passed between them. “I can do as I wish as slowly as I like. Oh...”

“Don't let the power go to your head,” cautioned Blaine with amusement, only to ramble off into incoherent muttering as Kurt dipped his head to nibble and suck at Blaine's jaw, scraping his tongue over the stubble there and working down, down, slowly down to his neck, to the lobe of his ear, to the smooth skin of his shoulder. 

Kurt _loved_ tasting Blaine, but did not often get the leisure of being able to take his time at doing so, they got so frenzied so quickly. Now his tongue was as his paintbrush, a tool to wield in the art of – not painting, now, but in the exploration of Blaine Anderson.

Guttural moans filled the air of the studio as Kurt's lips trailed wet, open kisses in his wake while he moved from shoulder to Blaine's arm. Kurt had taken such care and time painting the lean, firm muscles of Blaine's body, stroking in light and shadow and outlining their curves and lines. He had felt them under his gripping, desperate fingers a hundred times or more. But now he dipped the tip of his tongue to trace the hills and valleys, bit gently at the swell of Blaine's upper arm, sucked a soft kiss into the crook of his elbow, turned and tripped over the rope bindings to what he could reach of Blaine's hands. The fingers that had brought Kurt to the peaks of ecstasy so many times and in such a delightful variety of ways were given the most attentive treatment, each one he could get to sucked and laved, each line and knuckle teased with Kurt's tongue until Blaine couldn't even moan anymore and his body trembled against Kurt's back.

Then Kurt reversed his mouth's travels, returned back up arm and elbow and bicep and shoulder and neck to Blaine's mouth, smiling as he caught his lover's mouth in a kiss and then began his journey all over again, down the other side.

By the time he came back once more to Blaine's lips, he could see that the prolonged exploration had caused him to nearly come completely apart. Blaine's eyes were so wide and dark, almost none of their usual molten amber could be seen. His lips were swollen from Kurt's kisses, color was high in his cheeks, and his breath came in ragged jerks. Pleading was all over his face, and when Kurt glanced down, he could see his lover's cock was so hard, it strained up and away from Blaine and seemed to be almost reaching for Kurt in desperation. A pearly droplet of his seed had begun to leak from the rosy head and glimmered in the gaslight.

In this moment, Blaine had never been more beautiful and pleasing to look upon. He took Kurt's breath quite entirely away.

“What is it?” It sounded as if it were a struggle for Blaine to get even those words out, and it snapped Kurt out of his reverie. 

“You're beautiful,” he whispered simply, taking in the sight before him and burning it into his memory so that when this time was over, he would remember this for as long as he possibly could. One day, he thought, he might try to paint the memory, one day perhaps when it would not bite so deeply to do so. “You'll always be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”

“So are you to me,” came the gently amused, slightly ragged reply, making Kurt go very still, his heart twisting with painful slowness in his chest. Kurt's eyes met Blaine's and he felt as though he were drowning in love and desire and _need_.

Unwilling to extend the tease anymore, Kurt slipped down and out of the circle of Blaine's arms, trailing his fingers over the muscles of Blaine's stomach as he moved to kneel behind him. He couldn't resist slicking a long lick down the line of Blaine's spine as he pressed with his hand to bend him down, delighting in the shuddering groan this elicited. But he, too, was rock hard and suddenly wanted nothing more on this earth than to be buried deep within his lover, fingers gripping tight and denting into soft skin, for their straining moans to color the air in a sensual duet. Feeling unsteady on his feet, Kurt made as quick work as he could of fetching the vial of oil and pouring a golden puddle of it into his hands, rubbing them together to warm it up. “Are you all right?” he asked Blaine, worried that he was drawing this out too long, that it wasn't as good for Blaine as it was for himself.

Blaine glanced over his shoulder, a pleading look on his face. “I will be,” he answered hopefully, biting his lip a bit as he watched Kurt spread the oil on his hands. Then he could only gasp as Kurt slipped his fingers along the crevice of his buttocks, touching gently at the soft skin there and pressing oil into his hidden entrance.

Carefully and with delight at every little whimper and gasp he earned, Kurt stretched Blaine open one probing, twisting finger at a time. He felt his member twitch and strain with its desperate need to be inside of Blaine, to be pushing and thrusting into the tight warmth. 

At last, he could wait no longer. “Do you feel ready?” he asked urgently, keeping his fingers moving even as he pressed up close to Blaine's side and nibbled along the curve of his neck and shoulder. _Please let him say yes,_ he thought desperately, _please, oh please_.

“Now...please, Kurt, God, _please_ ,” came the broken, welcome response, and Kurt wasted no time pulling his fingers free – to the accompaniment of a long, tormented moan – and lining the head of his aching cock to where Blaine was warm and open and ready to take him in.

He had the strength to sink in slowly, the control to take careful half-strokes to complete the task of opening Blaine even more fully, but it was taking everything Kurt had to not simply thrust his hips forward and let himself be completely engulfed inside of Blaine. He could not begin to understand what self-control _Blaine_ had to possess to continue holding himself still and waiting for Kurt. 

When he finally thrust home, Kurt stopped, taking deep breaths once again to steady himself. The incredible _power_ he held in his hands now was nearly as tangible as Blaine's hipbones against his fingers. He had never, not once in his life, felt so responsible for the care and safety and pleasure of another person. His lovely Blaine was so utterly dependent on him in this moment, so trusting that Kurt would see to the enjoyment of them both.

Dear _God_ he never wanted Blaine to leave, wished again that they could be bound together forever as easily as he had tied Blaine to his bed. Kurt swallowed back a whine of despair and reached forward to place his hands on his lover's shoulders, dragging them back with his fingernails scraping down Blaine's back.

“ _Unggghhhh,_ ” was all Blaine could get out, an utterance so raw and primal that it unraveled the last fragile hold Kurt had on his control, going straight to his cock with a jolt.

Kurt reached forward again, this time sliding his fingers into Blaine's hair, grabbing a handful of curls in a firm grip and pulling as he had before. And again as before, Blaine groaned and threw his head back into the pull, and Kurt could see him biting down on his lower lip as he fought to not buck his hips back against Kurt's cock. 

He could take no more.

Releasing his grip, Kurt slipped his hand back to Blaine's hip and held tight, pulling out as slowly as he could, almost completely out of Blaine, letting only the head of his manhood rest just inside. One breath, two, and then he thrust forward hard, letting out his own groan as he filled Blaine up, their cries mingling and bouncing off the walls of the studio. Kurt let his fingernails dig in again to Blaine's skin, carefully, so carefully, not sure where the line was between pleasure and pain and not wanting to cross it.

Before him, Blaine's hands strained against their bonds, his fingers white-knuckled as they gripped at the bars of the bedframe. His dark curls against the cream linen of the pillow covers into which he tried to stifle his moans were a delicious contrast, the red marks on his back where Kurt's fingernails had trailed as bright as any paint on canvas. Kurt leaned forward to cover Blaine completely with the length of his body, his hips keeping their increasingly manic pace as he gasped against the sweat-damp heat of Blaine's back. “Blaine, oh, Blaine, so close,” he heard himself say, fumbling his hands around to catch and squeeze Blaine's member, pulling in time with his frantic strokes into his lover's body.

He lost himself in that moment, in the sensation of pulling and grabbing, of heat and _want_. Kurt's world narrowed to his cock burying itself over and over in Blaine, of the slight gloss of sticky semen under his palms where they clutched at Blaine, of the tiny grunts and sighs he heard when he lay his cheek against Blaine's back and closed his eyes. This was it, this was all he wanted, this spectacle of sex and desire and freedom in bondage and how Blaine sounded when Kurt drove into him -

Kurt tipped over the edge first, climaxing with not a shout but a low, almost inhuman sounding groan as he pushed his hips forward one last time and spilled deep into Blaine. And there he might have wished to stay forever, but mindful of his responsibility to the man bound beneath him, he pulled out and scrambled down to slip between Blaine's legs, twisting to lay on his back and suck the marvelous, engorged cock hanging there directly into his greedy mouth. 

Since this was his favorite thing for Blaine to do to him, Kurt was always gratified when his less expert efforts seemed to make Blaine feel as good as he made Kurt feel. And indeed, the incoherent yelps and gasps coming from over his head seemed to indicate that he was doing well. Full of pride for himself and love for the man he pleasured , Kurt wrapped his hands around Blaine's thighs and gripped hard, pulling Blaine into his mouth and sucking hard, winding his tongue frantically around and into every ridge and curve. He always, _always_ paid special attention to the little ridge dividing firm head from velvety shaft, always delighted in the nearly sobbing moans his care drew from Blaine's throat.

Bursts of salty little drops trickled from the head of Blaine's cock, rolling over Kurt's tongue and down his throat. This and the long breath he heard being sucked in were all the warning Kurt had before Blaine erupted hot into his eager mouth. Satisfaction tingled through Kurt as he sucked all of it down, his fingers dimpling into the backs of Blaine's thighs as his lover's hips jerked and thrust his pulsing member over and over between Kurt's lips, all control over his movements gone.

When at last, Blaine's frantic jerking movements stilled, Kurt pushed himself up the bed until he felt his head collide with the pillows and he was facing Blaine. He tilted his head back and reached to untie his knots as quickly as he could, carefully pulling the rope free and tossing it aside as Blaine collapsed on top of him, sated and breathing in deeply with a lazy smile on his face. In another moment Kurt felt himself grasped in strong arms and rolled over until he was laying atop Blaine, feeling his mouth being claimed and taken in a fierce kiss that left him, once more, entirely without the ability to go on breathing when it at last ended.

“I take it that this...that you...I was all right?” Suddenly he felt himself gone all modest and reticent again, worried and hopeful all at once. Turning his head slightly, Kurt saw red rings of rope burn encircling Blaine's wrists and winced, lifting his hand up to catch carefully at Blaine's and press soft kisses to the bright markings.

Blaine smiled up at him from the pillows. “It was everything I knew that it could be, with you,” he answered, eyes once again the molten amber Kurt liked so well, and full of some emotion he could not identify. “Everything wonderful and free and grand – that's what it was.”

A deep sigh of relief gusted out of Kurt then, and he slumped down to snuggle close. “I was afraid I would hurt you, or that I would take too long and you wouldn't enjoy it -”

“Shh.” Blaine held him close and tipped his chin up so that their eyes could meet. “It was perfect. You were perfect. Thank you. Thank you more than I can say.”

Pulling away, Kurt ducked his head back down and felt himself blush. “I just wanted to make you happy. As happy as you've made me. Because you have, you know.” It was a fight to get the words out around the bashful lump that rose in his throat, but it felt important to say, to make sure Blaine knew that their time together had been wonderful. “You've changed everything for me. In good ways.”

A kiss was pressed to the top of his head. “Knowing you has been the greatest thing I've experienced,” Blaine whispered, and Kurt could hear the affectionate smile in his voice. “I don't want it ever to end.”

 _Then don't let it, please,_ Kurt thought hopelessly with another smaller, more wistful sigh. Tilting his head up, he caught Blaine's lips in one last soft, sweet kiss before he rested his head against Blaine's chest and let his beloved's heartbeat lull him into sleep.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was nothing to add. The painting was done and perfect. A single brushstroke more would be too much.

* * *

Kurt stood motionless before his easel, brush loaded with bright yellow paint and held just shy of touching the canvas. His eyes flicked from leaf to leaf, to the reflection of the sun on the pond, to a wee rabbit perched at Apollo's feet.

 

There was nothing to add. The painting was done and perfect. A single brushstroke more would be too much.

 

Throttling violently down on the panic that clotted in his stomach, Kurt put his brush and palette down and cleared his throat. “Blaine.”

 

His model, his lover, his friend, all one and the glorious same, blinked his eyes as he came out of the trance he seemed to slip into while posing. “Hm?”

 

“It's done. Finished.” Taking a deep breath, Kurt stepped away from the easel on legs that threatened to collapse beneath him, so unsteady were they. “The painting.”

 

It seemed to take a moment for the words to truly sink in. But in an instant, Blaine's eyes were alight with excitement and he was bounding across the studio to catch Kurt up in a tight embrace. “Kurt! You've done it! You've truly done it!”

 

“I've done it,” Kurt echoed feebly, pressing close to Blaine, as close as he could, feeling the sun warmed skin beneath his palms, catching the scent of the macassar oil that tried in vain to tame Blaine's curls, hearing the congratulatory cheer spilling from his mouth.

 

_Blaine, Blaine, oh, Blaine, I never want to say goodbye to you._

 

“...so that means you'll be ready for the big exhibition at the Academy next week! I'm sure they'd love to show this, you've done so beautifully, oh, you must call on – Kurt!” Blaine's enthusiastic rambling dissolved into a laugh into Kurt's mouth as the artist lunged into a desperate kiss. “Kurt!”

 

“Want you now,” Kurt mumbled, pulling his smock over his head and throwing it aside, guiding Blaine towards the bed with more kisses and gentle pushes in between tearing off articles of his own clothing. Blaine, of course, was conveniently naked already, and never had Kurt blessed Rossetti more than now for his suggestion to hire Blaine as a model.

 

Nor had he cursed him with such desperate fervor.

 

Blaine fell across the bedstead, still laughing. “I shall never refuse your carnal desires, but Kurt, what has brought this on?”

 

“You're amazing.” Crawling up to straddle Blaine, Kurt slipped his hands along Blaine's arms to curl their fingers together while he dove to nuzzle and bite at his neck. He couldn't help his hips rocking down, rolling against Blaine's, feeling the delicious heat of his lover's cock rising against his inner thigh. He swallowed hard and sucked kisses into Blaine's throat until his lips buzzed. “You're perfect and wonderful and I couldn't have done this without you and I want you so much.”

 

_As many times as I can have you before I never see you again_ .

 

The clock had abruptly ticked its last, the end of days was here, and Kurt meant to make the very most of it that he could.

 

He let his hands drift back up so that he could weave Blaine's curls in his fingers and  _pull_ while he let his tongue memorize every taste of Blaine's mouth – apple and strawberry and strong sugared tea. Kurt never wanted to forget the heat of their tongues mingling together, the silky softness of Blaine's dark hair, the hills and gentle ridges of leanly toned muscle. How their legs tangled together at night, how Blaine's breath sounded when he slept, deep and regular and somehow even content. How Kurt loved waking up every morning with his lips pressed to Blaine's smooth shoulder.

 

_Memorize everything, never forget a detail_ .

 

He would immortalize Blaine – Blaine, not Apollo – in a painting no one else would ever see. It was frivolous folly to paint for oneself, the paint expenditure that would never be recouped, but he would do it. If love could not last forever, art could. And it could say the things he'd never been able to put voice to.

 

Squeezing his eyes shut, Kurt committed to memory the slow groans of pleasure winding out from Blaine's throat, the feel of his skin under Kurt's fingertips, and the image of him that Kurt always carried in his mind's eye, the first glimpse he'd ever had of a beautiful man in a fur loincloth posing effortlessly in the disarray of Hunt's studio, refusing to bow to the yoke of the temper of England's angriest artist. When he was eighty, he would remember this, all of it, he'd burned it with such intensity into his mind.

 

“Kurt,” Blaine groaned beneath him, pressing up until they were as close to one person as ever they could get. And Kurt knew what he wanted, knew so well, but he was not going to rush things, not this night. 

 

Pulling away, Kurt sat up and ran his hands over Blaine's chest, dimpling his fingers into the skin and rubbing gently. “You've been an excellent first model,” he murmured, tracing his thumbs over Blaine's ribs, feeling the steady beloved thump of his heartbeat. “I couldn't have asked for one better. Ever.”

 

Blaine caught one of Kurt's slowly roaming hands in his warm, strong one and brought it to his lips, pressing a kiss into the palm before turning it over to mouth gently at the knuckles. “I counted it both pleasure and privilege,” he replied softly, his words a gentle caress of a promise. “You are...so very extraordinary, Kurt, and you seem to be wholly unaware.” He pushed himself upright, wrapping his arms around Kurt's waist so that they were quite tangled in and around each other. “Finishing this painting...it's only the beginning for you. The beginning of so many wonderful things.”

 

_ I don't want any of them if you're not part of it, _ Kurt protested inwardly but still, as on so many occasions these last weeks, did not say. He wanted to beg Blaine to stay, was terrified of being refused. And so he said nothing, kept it behind tight lips and shuttered eyes. He ducked his head, feeling his cheeks burn. “It couldn't have been done without you,” he mumbled, cradling Blaine's head in his hands as if it were the most precious thing in the world.

 

Well. To him, it was. All of Blaine meant more to him than anything else.

 

“Kurt.” Blaine's thumb came up to brush away a tear that Kurt hadn't even felt falling. “What's wrong? What is it?”

 

Kurt took a deep breath and shook his head, pushing down his melancholy. He would not sully this night with sadness. Well, with any more sadness. Casting about, he chose his words with great care. “It's only...it is overwhelming,” he sighed, taking another breath to still his quivering nerves. That was something of an understatement. “To be finished, to have accomplished what I never thought I could...and with you...it's so much.”

 

It was complete truth, it simply wasn't the entire truth.

 

“But it's what you deserve.” Blaine shook his head, incredulity writ clear on his face. “Such talent as yours...I only stood as you told me and encouraged when I could. It was all you, Kurt! Every daub of paint, every raging tantrum, every late night, each and every carefully placed stroke of the brush that fleshed out the fantastic image residing in your marvelous head – all of that is you. I am simply honored to have been taken along on the journey with you. I feel most unworthy.”

 

“You're  _ not _ .” Kurt couldn't keep the words from bursting out with all the vehemence he'd been holding back in the weeks that time had trickled so swiftly through his fingers. “I am not skilled with words but you – you – no, I could never  _ ever _ have done it without you, I don't know what I shall do in the future if I do not paint you, you have changed  _ everything _ for me, my entire life is going to be  _ different _ now and it's all because of you and -” He stopped, completely at a loss for words and feeling his breath come so fast he was dizzy.

 

“Shh. Shh.” Blaine's eyes were wide in surprise and he rubbed his hands along Kurt's upper arms, doing as ever his best to restore calm. “Oh, lover. This is a night when you should only be ecstatic and proud of yourself.” He reached a hand to tip Kurt's chin up so that his lips could be softly kissed. “Let me see if I can help put you in a properly congratulatory mood. You deserve to be happy at a time like this.” Touching their foreheads together, Blaine smiled and let his hands wander, brushing Kurt's skin here and there and leaving the sensation of tiny fires in his wake. “To second chances at first impressions,” he whispered with a low chuckle.

 

Laughing despite himself, in Blaine's relentless joy in life, Kurt at last found the strength to surrender, to give over to the desire to lose himself entirely in the time afforded to them. He tilted his head forward and gently nuzzled at the soft spot just below Blaine's jaw, nudging until, with another low laugh of his own, Blaine obediently lifted his head to allow Kurt better access to mouth and suck at his throat. His fingers continued to skim absently along Kurt's body as he dropped his head back further, happy hums of contentment causing the skin of his throat to vibrate under Kurt's lips. Gently, growing somehow more serene by the moment, Kurt began to push Blaine back down on the bed to recline beneath him as he resumed his task of memorizing each wonderful inch of his beloved.

 

Pleasured sighs and groans filled the air once more as Kurt kissed and licked his way down the warm expanse of Blaine's chest and torso, paying tribute to each dip and dimple he found along with way with reverent lips and teasing tongue. Was it so very many months ago that he hadn't been so much as kissed? Oh, Blaine had given him so much. 

 

He would do all he could tonight to show how much it meant to him. If this was their last, he would not dwell in the loss, but revel and be grateful for all he had gained.

 

“Turn over,” he instructed quietly, enjoying the brush of Blaine's legs between his as his lover complied. With fondness that threatened to swell and split his heart, Kurt surveyed that which lay before him. “Your backside should be given a knighthood.” The words emerged on a thread of breath as he brushed his appreciative – if slightly avaricious – hands over the firm globes. A slap on the right cheek elicited a long moan of delight from Blaine before he turned heavy-lidded eyes on Kurt.

 

“Only if your cock is as equally honored,” he retorted with a languorous smile. “For it is magnificent and has truly been excellent in its service to one of the Queen's most loyal subjects.”

 

Kurt blushed furiously – to still even be capable of that after all this time and all that he had done! He almost laughed. “It – I just – I - “ He shook his head. “You flatter me. Shh. I wish to concentrate on you.” Ignoring the chuckle this earned, Kurt slipped his hands up along Blaine's back to his shoulders, kneading his hands against the tight muscles there. “Ah, Blaine. All that standing and holding poses. I don't know how you did it, you must have been so  _ sore _ at the end of it all. Yet never did I hear you complain. Not once.”

 

“Would do it all over again,” came the almost sleepy reply, muffled in a decadent sigh of pleasure. “Anything for you.”

 

_...anything _ ? Again, Kurt was tempted to speak up, to ask Blaine to not let their relationship end with the completion of the painting. Again he found the words locked quite tightly up in his throat. This was how it had to be. Blaine had no reason to want to stay with him, who was he, after all? Just another artist, just someone who was always alone.

 

Again he pushed away the urge to wallow in sadness and instead, lay himself down upon Blaine until he covered his lover like a counterpane on the bed, stretching his hands out along his arms to tangle their fingers together. “Thank you.”

 

“F'r what?” Blaine arched his buttocks up against Kurt's pelvis, almost making Kurt forget what he'd been thinking about. Kurt shook his head and grasped at the fleeting thought before it could escape entirely.

 

“For you,” he replied honestly, clutching Blaine's fingers more tightly in his as he began to shift his hips against his lover's body. His erect cock was nestled in the cleft of Blaine's backside, and he liked it there, liked the sensation of being cradled. He had no desire to get up and locate the oil, to bury himself deeply within Blaine, to be away from him for even one moment. Kurt wanted to lay here in this way for as long as he could make the illusion of forever feel.

 

He lifted his head from where it had rested against Blaine's and gazed upon his beloved, at the sweep of dark lashes on his cheek, the tumble of curls that always looked as if Blaine frequently went around pushing his hands through his hair when deep in thought – which Kurt knew very well was quite truly the case. Kurt took in once again the birthmark on his shoulder, the firm lean lines of muscle, the full lips perpetually curved in a smile, everything he'd looked upon and loved for the last several months.

 

He would never, ever forget.

 

With the most infinite of care, Kurt began again to shift his hips against Blaine, so that his cock slipped gently along the cleft in which it rested. Soft skin against soft skin, warmth to warmth, the head of his member already beginning to let down sticky drips to evidence his arousal. With reluctance, Kurt disengaged one hand from Blaine's and as quickly as he could he lapped at it with his tongue, making it wet and slick before encircling his own cock and stroking until it, too was dampened and his fingers had smudged the leaking droplets of seed along the shaft as well. The merest thread of a groan slipped from his mouth as he returned his member to its resting place and it began to slide more easily between the rounded mounds of Blaine's buttocks.

 

He tangled his fingers in with Blaine's again and lifted their joined hands, turning them so that Blaine's palm was facing his lips. “Lick it,” he directed softly, remembering the same command being given to him so many months before. It seemed a lifetime ago, that morning, the two of them facing each other on this very same bed, Kurt so full of trepidation, Blaine so confident. As if it was something that had happened to someone else entirely.

 

Well. It really had been. Kurt could not say he was the same trembling, nervous, unknowing young man that he had been then. Not at all.

 

Blaine's tongue darted out, pink and wet, and licked a stripe up his own palm. He rolled his eyes so that the one Kurt could see was pinned upon him, gazes locked together as Blaine sucked his own fingers into his mouth one at a time and got them thoroughly wet, the saliva shining in the light of the room's gaslamps. He let the tip of his tongue flick out and brush over Kurt's bent knuckles, too, dipping it into the creases and trying to burrow it in under where their fingers were joined.

 

“Blaine...” Kurt groaned, his slippery cock shifting deeper into the crevice in which it rested with each involuntary twitch of his hips. He stretched his head back, biting his lip when Blaine took their damp, joined hands and used them to grasp at his own member, straining just as hard as Kurt's beneath their bodies. With the first squeeze of their intertwined fingers, Blaine arched his hips up off of the bed and into Kurt, and both of them let out unwinding sighs at the bliss of it, at the riot of sensation and the quiet sense of unity.

 

If, Kurt thought, he were forced in that second to choose but one memory to carry with him for the rest of his life, it would be this one perfect, close, intimate moment. 

 

He lowered his cheek to press against Blaine's back and squeezed his eyes shut, listening to each shuddering breath the two of them made as they rocked and moved together. Feeling the fingers of their free hands entwined on the pillow as Kurt tilted his hips back and forth, the squeeze and release of the hands that stroked Blaine's cock, the firm warmth that surrounded his own erection as it glided in the cleft between Blaine's buttocks.

 

It was warm and close, soft and sweet and slow, lacking all of the frenzied, passionate desperation that had always marked their encounters before tonight. No more words passed between them, no more speaking glances, nothing but touch and breath and the stillness Kurt had once felt on a childhood beach excursion to Brighton with his father, when he'd wandered out just a small distance too far into the water. Just before a large wave had broken over his small head, it had felt to Kurt that the entire world that surrounded him had gone eerily still and quiet, a hitch and pause in the endless march of time that denoted this as a significant moment.

 

His father had swum in and dragged him out just as he'd thought he would drown, but there was no one to rescue Kurt this time.

 

The wave broke in the next instant, a pulsing shudder that rocked Kurt's entire body and curled his toes as he climaxed. Beneath him, Blaine's back heaved against Kurt's chest as his lover, too, tilted and fell over pleasure's edge. In their fisted hands, Blaine's cock spurted hot seed over the tangle of their fingers. Long sighing groans of satisfaction spilled from their lips in tandem, the varying timbres of their voices the only difference in the sounds with which they filled the shivering air.

 

They collapsed as if they were children's toy balloons deflating after a long day, their bodies sinking into the soft feather mattress of Kurt's bed, still tangled together and heedless of the cooling stickiness of the spendings that coated their hands and Blaine's lower back. Kurt still did not want to move away from Blaine's side for even a single moment, did not care for anything that didn't involve touching his lover, kissing him, taking in his exhalations as if they were necessary for Kurt's own continued life. Carefully, he turned Blaine so that they faced each other and before a single word could be uttered, Kurt sealed his mouth over Blaine's in a long kiss, letting his tongue flick and taste and memorize.

 

Only when he felt there was nothing more to burn into his memory – when he was sure he would know the touch and feel and sound of Blaine until the very end of his days – only then did Kurt break the kiss with one last nip of his teeth on Blaine's soft lower lip, only then did he sigh and withdraw and tangle his fingers into Blaine's curls as they rested their foreheads together, their breaths slowing into a gentle rhythm and neither of them willing to shatter the charged silence that surrounded them.

 

It was a perfect moment. A perfect memory. A perfect ending.

 

If this had to be their last night, Kurt decided, if this was to be what fate handed them, he could ask for no greater gift than that which he had received.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which seven days seems a lifetime, and Elizabeth Siddal takes matters into her own hands.

* * *

Kurt was not having a good time. 

He stood before _Apollo and his Lyre_ , triumphantly hung at the Royal Academy, and simply...stared. He had been for possibly the last twenty minutes, while exhibition guests bustled and buzzed around him.

This painting was all he had seen of Blaine for the last seven days.

“That is not the face of a man who is having a good time.” A tipsy Rossetti ambled up and threw an arm over Kurt's shoulder. His observation had been as dry as the champagne he'd shoved into Kurt's limp hand. “Cheer up! Free champagne, a painting hung at eye level so that buyers can see it, _and_ you're not a virgin! You should be dancing in the streets.”

He didn't remove his eyes from the painting. “Actually, the painting's already sold, Gabriel.” Uttering such news to Rossetti, who still struggled for his own acceptance in the art community, should have been a moment of triumph after all of the nasty jokes and jibes made at Kurt's expense, but Kurt felt nothing so much as empty. No joy, no victory, only a vast gaping plain of nothingness where his spirit had once resided.

“It...” Out of the corner of Kurt's eye, he could see his erstwhile mentor standing slackjawed in astonishment. “Hummel. It _sold_?”

“Yes.” Almost as soon as it had been hung on the wall, actually. Kurt was still attempting to understand it. He'd always been told he was uncommonly talented, and to an extent he did know it to be true, but this! To have sold his first completed painting almost before the paint was even dry!

And all he'd had to do was allow his heart to be broken. Suppressing a sigh, Kurt gazed into the artificial amber of Blaine's painted eyes, a wan imitation of the life and light his lover had truly exuded. Kurt had tried so hard to capture his warm good humor, the love Blaine had for the simple art of existing, his kindness and free spirit. He'd come close, he thought, but it would take a far greater artist than he to successfully accomplish it, if it were even possible at all.

“Come now, Hummel,” Rossetti's tone was impatient as he jolted Kurt out of his sad reverie. “You've sold a painting! This should be a cause for shouting and laughter, yet here you stand as if I've just hung your pet rabbit from a tree limb!” He snorted in derision. “I thought getting thoroughly fucked for months on end would have loosened you up a little.”

“Pig.” Lizzie swept in and snatched Rossetti's untouched champagne flute from his hand, taking a distinctly unladylike swig before swatting at the back of his head and saving Kurt the trouble of both scathing retort and retaliatory assault. “You are actually even less helpful than an organ grinder's monkey. Go.”

Rossetti sulked, but replied only with a relatively mild, “Well, you can't say I'm _wrong_ ,” before wandering off in search of fresh champagne and more congenial company. Lizzie beamed at Kurt.

“There,” she said, nodding in satisfaction and clinking her confiscated glass against Kurt's. With her free hand, she gripped his face and pushed his lips out into an exaggerated pout. “He's gone. Now, tell Auntie Lizzie why you are such a grumpy-puss on a day so grand as this.” She waved the half-empty flute at the painting before them. “You have done such a remarkable thing, Kurt! Even Dickens cannot find a single ill-word to utter against such fine work.” Tilting her head to indicate the disgruntled writer, Lizzie giggled as he harrumphed and stalked off. “Gabriel does have a point. You _should_ be happy.”

“Everyone says that,” Kurt replied irritably, setting his unwanted drink aside. “Well, I am the one who gets to make that decision, and I have chosen to _not_ be happy. As is my prerogative.”

He felt Lizzie studying him for a moment before she set down her own glass, seizing his wrist and beginning to drag him bodily from the exhibition hall. “Right. Come along.”

“Lizzie!” He tried to pull free, but truly did she have a grip like iron manacles. She towed him from the room with ease, red curls bouncing and flying around her shoulders as she strode briskly through the corridors of the Academy. 

“Not a word from you. Honestly, why is it always up to me to solve the problems of the world?” She peered into half a dozen empty classrooms before finding an empty one that evidently suited her. Pulling Kurt along behind her, Lizzie plopped onto a dusty chaise longue and sat him down with her. “Now, speak,” she ordered, folding her hands into her lap and fixing him with one of her patented no-nonsense gazes.

However, for once Kurt felt he had the backbone to stand up to her. Granted, he felt a bit silly doing so since she was clearly trying to help, but _carpe diem_ , as the old saying went, and he dug his metaphorical heels in. “No.”

A frown creased Lizzie's fair forehead, drawing her delicate brows together. “Kurt.”

“No, Lizzie.” He crossed his arms and tipped his chin into the air. “This is nothing you can fix for me and at any rate, I don't wish to discuss it.” Gathering his dignity about himself, Kurt got to his feet and tried to walk away, only to be yanked right back down onto the chaise, courtesy of Lizzie's strong little hand on the tail of his greatcoat. “Oh, for _heaven's_ sake, Elizabeth.”

“Don't you Elizabeth _me,_ Kurt Hummel.” Lizzie's stubborn chin was just as high in the air as Kurt's, and just as stubbornly set, and he knew he'd not get out of this without a fight. “Why must you behave this way? You _deserve_ to be happy at a time like this!”

The words struck too close to his heart and drove the fight right out of him. In his mind, Kurt heard Blaine's loving, affectionate voice uttering the same sentence and he flinched away from Lizzie, feeling as if she'd punched a hole directly into his chest. “Stop, Lizzie, please. I cannot.”

Silence descended like a suffocating blanket between them as Kurt struggled to regain his composure, to force the ache into hiding and reduce it to a livable quantity. It had been a very long week since he'd last seen Blaine, a struggle for him to even want to get out of bed. All that forced him up in the mornings was the daily realization that it was even more painful to lay alone in that bed than it was to turn his back on it.

At his side, Lizzie was so deep in thought he could almost hear it. At last, she glanced at him and spoke, her frown creasing more deeply into her pale skin. “Kurt...where is Blaine?”

It was unusual, Kurt reflected, to wish that it were Rossetti sitting next to him rather than Lizzie, and yet here he was longing for exactly that. Rossetti might have been the driving force behind Kurt and Blaine meeting, but Kurt knew well that his interest ended there. Lizzie, however, had the heart of a romantic and the tenacity of a bulldog, and he was so very doomed to lose this fight. He gave up. “Blaine isn't here.” _Stop prying, stop trying to **help** ,_ he seethed inwardly.

But no, it was not to be. Lizzie's lips compressed into a straight, tight line, and her breath was harsh as she inhaled sharply, eyes like chips of green ice on the Thames when she glared. “And _why_ , Kurt,” she ground out, hands curling into small fists, “is Blaine not here? I should think he would want to be at your side today of all days.”

The scoff that escaped Kurt's mouth did so utterly beyond his control. “And why in the world would you think that, Lizzie? The painting is done, there's no call for him to be here.” He tossed his head back, clutching at his pride with failing fingers. The laugh he couldn't help was more than a little bitter, and he saw how it startled Lizzie when it burst out.

“Wait here,” she ordered, getting to her feet and sweeping out of the room. Kurt listened to the sweeping of her skirts along the corridor floor and, as the sound receded into the distance, considered taking the opportunity to run as if the devil nipped at his heels. He knew, however, that doing so would merely be delaying the inevitable. Lizzie would simply show up at his studio, demanding to be allowed to help whether he liked it or not.

And so perhaps he _should_ go ahead and get this over with, he thought. Get all the pain out in one go. Then he could return to his lonely room and immerse himself in his next project – _Apollo_ 's buyer had immediately commissioned a large study of the Muses of Parnassus at their work, and Kurt, in his miserable distraction, had accepted the order before he realized he hardly knew _one_ woman he could pay to pose nearly nude, let alone _nine_.

Further, if he did find them, how would he fit them into his studio?

Of course then there would be the problem of nine nearly naked women in his studio, waiting to be painted. Somehow, Kurt didn't expect that Blaine's method of easing his nerves and modesty would be applicable here - 

_Oh, Blaine_. Melancholy crashed down around him once more, slumping his shoulders and knotting his stomach. Being accustomed to loneliness didn't make it any easier whenever someone left him behind. The deaths of his parents. Childhood friends drifting away when he'd begun his schooling at the Academy. Fellow Academy students, kept at arms' length out of either envy or awe at the talent the instructors said he possessed. Yes, Kurt had always been alone, yes, he was accustomed to being left behind, but this time...this time he wished it had ended differently. That he'd known what to do or be to make Blaine stay.

“Here.” Lizzie had returned while Kurt was sunk into his sorrow, and now she shoved a fresh glass of champagne into his hand. “Don't drop it! I think you need that drink.” She sat back down, tipping some of her drink down her own throat before she went on. “Now. The question of the hour. Why _would_ Blaine want to be here? Hm. Hmmmm.” She tipped her head this way and that, pretending to think. “Well, let's see. Ah, yes! Quite apart from him being the model for a painting that had five members of the House of Lords practically in fisticuffs trying to acquire it, quite apart from it being customary for models to attend these exhibitions so that the public and other artists can meet them – oh, yes, that's it, because he _loves_ you, you idiot!” Her pointy elbow nudged sharply into Kurt's side, making him gasp in pain. “Even if the two of you cannot show your affection as Gabriel and I do, I should still think he'd wish to be here, being proud of you, supporting you.”

“He doesn't love me,” Kurt mumbled into his glass, squeezing his eyes shut at the pain of the utterance.

Lizzie's long eyelashes fluttered as she blinked in confusion. “I beg your pardon?”

“He doesn't love me.” Drawing himself up very, very straight, Kurt strove mightily to bury his hurt, hiding it under a nonchalance he did in no way feel. “Our arrangement was for the duration of the painting. The painting is complete, and so are we. It's quite simple.”

When she wished it to – which was...well...most of the time, if one were being perfectly honest – Lizzie Siddal's incredulous stare could reduce the constitution of great men to dusty rubble. Right now, it was making Kurt fight the urge to squirm and dive under the chaise. “Odd,” she finally remarked, one red eyebrow delicately arched nearly to her hairline, “I did not observe _any_ bacon dangling from the trees on my walk to the Academy this morning.”

“I beg _your_ pardon?” Kurt found himself trying to imagine the scenario she described and found it to be so entirely ludicrous that he had to discard it immediately. “Whatever are you talking about, Lizzie?”

“Pigs are incapable of flight, Kurt,” she snapped impatiently. “Or, more succinctly, you are _lying_. An arrangement! When you _love_ Blaine! No, don't deny a thing, it's as plain as the nose on your face and has been from the first time you saw him!” She shook her head, setting her russet curls to bouncing with the violence of it. “We all know perfectly well he loves you, also. An _arrangement_.” In her indignation, Lizzie actually snorted. “As if you'd be so cold-hearted, as if you were capable.”

“Well _he_ certainly seems to be,” Kurt shot back without thinking. As soon as the words were out, he clapped his hands over his mouth in horror. “I mean...that is to say...”

Now both of Lizzie's eyebrows were disappearing into her hair. “Explain.”

Resigned and miserable, what else could he do but comply? “He's gone, Lizzie. I haven't seen him since the painting was complete. Not a word, nothing.” The words began to clog in his throat, creating such a large lump that he had to stop speaking simply to try and breathe.

“No.” Again, Lizzie was shaking her head, but more slowly now, disbelief clear on her pretty face. “He wouldn't.”

“I assure you, he has.” He looked away as he sniffled, surreptitiously digging out a handkerchief with which to wipe his nose. “I'm not...well, I was actually expecting it, really. It is that to which I have grown accustomed.”

“But I don't understand. Of course he loves you.” Lizzie seemed to be stuck in a land of confusion and bewilderment. “Of course he does. It was quite obvious, I can't begin to imagine that...there must be some sort of misunderstanding.”

“I can't see how.” Turning back to face her, Kurt tipped up one shoulder in a shrug that he was sure looked much more careless than he felt. “Lizzie, he's never even said that he loved me. Not once. I haven't any idea why _you_ are so sure that he does.”

“He never sa – _Kurt_.” Her jaw dropped. “Do you mean to say that you are relying on the spoken word to inform you of a lover's true intentions?”

He felt his eyes narrow. This felt like a trap. “...yes?”

When Lizzie leaped to her feet and whirled to face him, the expression on her face was so very thunderous that Kurt nearly expected a vicious downpour to begin outside. “You are an _artist_ ,” she seethed, spinning to start pacing the room. “You are meant to observe!”

“Lizzie -”

She went on as if he hadn't said a word. “All these months – all this time! And you've seen nothing! You've been waiting on words – _words_! As if they could ever say as much as one glance!”

Kurt's head began to hurt with the effort of trying to maintain some sort of emotional equilibrium. “I don't understand,” he murmured plaintively, feeling so very lost. “Lizzie, please, I -”

Whirling back to face him, it took several moments of silent pointing and visible attempts to compose herself before Lizzie could even speak again. “You have had this man under your watchful eye all this time, have seen him naked in every conceivable way day in and day out – are you honestly saying to me, right in this very moment, that you have never once noticed the way he _looks_ at you?”

“I -” He wondered if he would ever get to finish a sentence again. It wasn't looking likely at the moment.

“You are a _fool_ , Kurt Hummel. Worse than a fool, perhaps.” Now she was thoroughly agitated, and resumed pacing the room. To Kurt's amazement, she actually seemed on the verge of tears. “And what about yourself? Waiting for Blaine to declare his love, did it ever cross your mind that perhaps _he_ was waiting on _you_? Did you ever say it, since you seem to place such a very great importance on words?”

“No.” He bowed his head against the surge of terror burning in his chest. “I simply...Lizzie, I could not.”

She stopped in her tracks and stared at him for a long, long moment. “Then for God's sake, Kurt,” she said at last, spreading her hands out wide in helpless astonishment. “For God's sake, whatever did you expect?”

“I don't know.” He could only sit and wring his hands. “I don't...Lizzie, I don't know _anything_. I love him, it frightens me quite to death, I've been alone for quite a long time! How was I to know? How?”

Realization flashed across Lizzie's face, melting anger in its wake and dissolving it from her tight shoulders and rigid spine. With a heavy sigh and sad expression, she trudged back to the chaise and resumed her seat, opening her arms to embrace Kurt. “Oh, Kurt. I'm so sorry. Of course you weren't to know. Of course you weren't. How thoughtless of me.” Another sigh ruffled his hair as she squeezed more tightly. “We have...we have all quite failed you, haven't we?”

“I should have asked.” Should have spoken, should have noticed, the list of things he should have done was long and impossible. 

“We should all have realized or remembered your innocence, your inexperience and what it would mean. I could have been more help to you. Alas, I myself fell prey to being as unobservant as I accused you of being.” Pulling away, Lizzie stroked his hair gently and squeezed his hand. “I _am_ sorry.”

He could but shrug, and muster up a meager smile. “I do not blame you, Lizzie. You have your own life about which to worry.”

“Even so...” She nibbled at her lower lip, eyes dark and troubled. “What will you do?”

“I don't know.” It seemed to be all that was left to him, the gaping void of not knowing. “I went to his rooms, just yesterday. To see if he wanted to have a drink, perhaps. But his landlady informed me that he'd been gone for days and she didn't know where.” When he swallowed down the lump in his throat, it weighed his stomach down as an anchor on a ship. “I just...he's gone, Lizzie. Really gone.”

She seemed at a complete loss for words. “I'm sorry.”

Kurt, too, did not know what else to say. He simply felt so very tired and sad. “I think I want to go home, now.” The painting had sold, and so there was no _real_ need for him to remain at the Academy. He could not face the idea of going back out into the press of people, faking good cheer and answering moronic questions about his technique and model and education and...no. It was not to be endured.

“Wait. Stay.” Lizzie put a hand on his arm as he stood to go. “We can simply remain in this room, Kurt. You don't have to go home and be alone, and I won't make you discuss this any longer.” She stood up. “I can go fetch us some more champagne, if you stay here, and we'll have our own little celebration. For you really _should_ celebrate at least a tiny bit, Kurt. Take some pride in your accomplishment! You did create rather a magnificent work. The first of many, I'm sure. Let us at least try to celebrate you a little, please?”

There was nothing that could cheer him up, he was sure, but Lizzie looked so hopeful and guilty that he simply could not turn her down. And it did seem an excellent compromise – for all that he did not wish to interact with hundreds of obsequious social butterflies, Kurt also did not truly care to return to his lonely studio just yet, now that the painting, too, was gone. These days without Blaine had been difficult enough. Now the last link Kurt had to him would be hanging in some stuffy peer's private collection of art and he'd never see it again. The thought was a blow to the stomach. “All right, Lizzie. Yes. I'll stay for a bit longer.”

“Excellent.” She leaned down and gave him a peck on the cheek. “I'll be gone just a moment.” In a swirl of skirts, she bustled to the door of the classroom and tugged it open. “Oh!”

Rossetti's cheerful voice boomed through the doorway. “There you are! Hunt said he'd seen you two run off this way, so I came a-searching for my lady fair.” He poked his head around the door jamb and waved a greeting to Kurt. “And I've found something I thought you'd like, Hummel?”

 _Found something_? Kurt felt his brows draw together in a puzzled frown, only to gasp in shock at the sound of a most unexpected voice. “Oh, well, no, I'm sure he doesn't wish -” Blaine, as yet unseen, began to demur, only to choke off the rest of his sentence when the sound of someone slapping him heartily on the back echoed through the corridor.

“Nonsense,” Rossetti scoffed. “Of course he does. Go on, then.” Reaching into the room, he seized Lizzie by the wrist and dragged her out, shoving a surprised-looking Blaine through the doorway in the next instant. “Right, Hummel, I'll trade my fianceé for your fellow here and we'll just sit here listening at the keyhole while you two get re-acquainted. Anderson says he hasn't seen you in _days_!” He winked roguishly. “That can't be right. At any rate, try and behave – or don't, if you like.” With a tip of his hat, Rossetti nudged Blaine further into the room and pulled the door shut behind him.

Kurt hadn't realized he was lurching to his feet until he was already there. He could only stand frozen, caught between fear, longing, and uncertainty as he greedily drank in the sight of Blaine as if it had been years, not days, since they last parted. His hand came up and stretched out to reach for Blaine of its own accord; when he realized it, he snatched it back. “Blaine,” Kurt began in a voice that was almost a whisper, then faltered as he could not think of more to say.

“I'm sorry,” Blaine blurted, twisting his hat in his hands. “I didn't mean – Gabriel just _dragged_ me in here – I've interrupted, I'll go -”

“No, you, never, you weren't interrupting,” Kurt replied, mystified that Blaine would even think so. And even if he had been, Kurt _still_ wouldn't want him to go. “Of course you weren't. Hello.”

“Hello.” Blaine nodded, but stayed still, watching Kurt with an uncharacteristic wariness that was completely baffling. Where was the confident, cocksure Blaine with whom Kurt had fallen in love? “I don't wish to bother...I came...I only came to see the painting hung in the Exhibition Hall. Rossetti says it has already sold?”

“I...yes.” Puzzled and worried, Kurt found himself taking a step or two forward and had to fight the urge to run over and just grab Blaine up in his arms. What in heaven's name was wrong? “Are you...Blaine, are you quite all right?”

Blaine ignored him, still fidgeting distractedly with his hat. “It's wonderful, that you've sold it so quickly. But you are an extraordinary talent, of course, I'm not at all surprised.” He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes, which remained unusually melancholy in a way that made Kurt's heart ache to see. Who had done this, who had made Blaine so _sad_? Kurt took another step forward, his hand reaching out again. All he wanted to do was to make the sadness go _away_ , to chase away the shadows darkening Blaine's eyes and do what he could to bring the light back. Even if Blaine didn't love him, he still - 

_Are you honestly saying to me, right in this very moment, that you have never once noticed the way he looks at you?_

Lizzie's exasperated words rang through Kurt's mind, locking him in place as he stared at Blaine – then _looked_ at Blaine, really _looked_ at him, taking in all of the tiny details he hadn't noticed in his desperate joy in seeing Blaine again at all.

Blaine didn't just look sad, he looked _awful_. Exhausted and rumpled, his hair a mess, to say nothing of the stubble on his face that must have been at least two days old. He looked rather as if he'd just rolled out of bed, thrown on any old thing from his wardrobe and wandered down to the Academy. Normal for Rossetti, perhaps, but absolutely not for Blaine, who tended towards being overly dapper despite the fact that he'd spent much of the last several months completely naked.

When Kurt considered that Blaine was usually clean-shaven and tidy to a fault, this was, he thought, a fairly decent indicator that something really was very wrong. 

And when he stepped close enough to finally close the distance between them and look into Blaine's eyes, he saw more closely that caution and heartbreaking sadness – and a flash of something that he knew well. Knew well, and never dared allow to fully flower.

Hope. For...for _Kurt_?

Could it truly be that _Blaine_ thought _Kurt_ did not love him? And more, that Blaine _wanted_ Kurt to?

Oh, God, could it be that Lizzie actually was correct? Could Kurt have gotten everything disastrously wrong this entire time? Did he...did he dare hope? The very idea set him quaking in his boots. 

But seeing Blaine upset for the first time, Kurt realized, was so much more terrible than his own fear. Worse than that was the possibility that Blaine's distress was Kurt's fault. For being blind, foolish, self-absorbed and too concentrated on something that...well, that in the end was an assumption, wasn't it? Even if he was sure it was true, that there wasn't any reason for a person as amazing as Blaine to want to stay with him – it had still been an assumption. Lizzie _was_ right.

He could have asked. He could have looked, observed, as he was meant to do. Kurt felt quite like an idiot. A terrified idiot, but an idiot nonetheless. And he had to know if this really was his fault. If it was something he could fix, that Blaine would _let_ him fix. There was every possibility that this wasn't his fault at all and perhaps he would be bidding Blaine farewell for good after all, but Kurt simply could not take the chance that he'd caused Blaine hurt for even a moment. He had to know.

Slowly, as if approaching a feral cat, Kurt extended his arm and so very carefully took Blaine's hand gently in his. “Please,” he murmured, deciding to keep his approach simple. “Please, Blaine, will you tell me what's the matter?”

For a moment, Blaine looked like he might turn on his heel and flee rather than answer the question. But at last he set his jaw and drew himself up standing straight, looking directly into Kurt's eyes and a little more like his usual self than he had just seconds before. “I could,” he began, voice a touch too neutral and calm, “but I don't wish to be a burden, Kurt. This is a significant day for you and I would not like to sully it for you -”

“You can't. Not ever, not you.” Kurt hoped the smile on his face was reassuring and welcoming and that it hid his panic at trying to decide how to tell Blaine of his feelings. “This isn't like you. If I can help, I would like to.” 

Blaine looked as if he, too, were mentally wrestling with something. In the end, he sighed and dropped his gaze. “I won't burden you, Kurt.”

“But you couldn't! How many times do I – Blaine, please!” Frustration at himself and worry for Blaine sent the words tumbling out of Kurt's mouth before he could even really begin to sort out his thoughts. “I'm afraid this might be my fault, Lizzie has just got done telling me that I am a _complete_ idiot, and I think she's right, because all this time I have been sitting here missing you before you were even gone, I thought that you could not possibly wish to stay with me once we were done with the painting and you never said if you love me or not so I didn't know.”

Blaine's eyes widened until they resembled tea saucers. “Kurt -”

But Kurt rushed on, panicked but unable to shut his mouth. “And then I went to your rooms to see you and you were gone and I thought for certain that I was right, but Lizzie says it's plain to see that you _do_ love me and that I wasn't looking for it because I am completely stupid and relying on words instead of what's right in front of my eyes and I am _so blind_ for an artist, my God, unless I am wrong and you don't love me and you aren't upset because you think I don't love you and oh, no, why can't I stop _talking_?” Kurt pressed both hands over his mouth before he could say any more. It seemed the only way to stem the mortifying tide of words.

Before him, Blaine had gone still, eyes still wide and cautious and curious. “Wait. What was that?”

Kurt didn't remove his hands from his mouth, so when he asked, “What was what?” it was rather muffled, but Blaine seemed to understand, and a tiny smile began to twitch at his lips.

“Kurt. Did you just say that you love me?”

Blood rushed to heat Kurt's cheeks as he carefully unmuzzled himself and covered his eyes, peeking through his fingers. “It is possible. I could...I could take it back if it is unwelcome...”

“You could _not_.” Blaine reached up and tugged Kurt's hands down, pulling him into a kiss that was fraught with as much relief as it was joy and passion. “My God, never take it back. Of course I love you, and you've no idea how happy you've just made me, these last days have been a torment.” He kept interspersing kisses with words until they were both breathless with laughter. “I've been stuck in Cornwall for _five days_ , my father has been ill. And I've _missed_ you so much but I did not want to impose on you once the painting was done, and I wasn't certain you wished me to stay...”

“Forever. I want you to stay _forever_ , I want to love you forever, to paint you forever, to everything _everywhere_ forever.” Kurt felt nearly hysterical with happiness. “There isn't a thing I can think of doing that I don't want you doing with me. Do you truly love me? Why have you never said?”

“Why haven't you?” Blaine countered, but his smile was fond. “No, you are right. I should have said something, honestly. It would have spared me these last several days of being so unhappy.” He sighed. “Love does make one a fool. So many times I have wanted to tell you, I have. And I thought you might have gotten an inkling the night of...well...the night I asked you to tie me up. I've never placed such trust in another person, Kurt!” If Blaine's cheeks were to burn any more brightly red, Kurt thought he might burst into flame on the spot. “Not even Thad. But still you said nothing, and I did not know what to say in return...so I also said nothing...and now look at me! I am a mess. I honestly thought I could cope with this more rationally, but clearly not.”

“I am only this clean because Rossetti made a jibe about my hygiene,” Kurt confessed. “And when it's _Gabriel_ pointing such things out...”

Blaine was laughing brightly, trying to shake his head and nod at once. “Then your situation must have been quite dire indeed, and I am sorry to have caused it.” In the next instant, his face fell slightly and he caught his bottom lip between his teeth. “Kurt...in the spirit of our newfound love and honesty...we must talk, for I have a confession to make.”

Kurt tipped his head up and narrowed his eyes in apprehension. “I do not think I like the sound of that.”

“Well...” Blaine began to squirm and looked somewhat sheepish. “In truth, we must talk about who I truly am. Who I am, what I do, my family – so many things.”

“Who you are?” Fear again touched Kurt's spine with icy fingers, and he felt his entire body go rigid with tension. “How do you mean? You are Blaine Anderson, are you not?”

And now it was Blaine's turn for his face to burn crimson. “The Honorable Blaine Edward Anderson,” he mumbled, casting his glance down to the marbled flooring.

“The...you...Hono...you're a _peer_?” Bewilderment crashed through Kurt's mind in the manner of bulls and china shops. He found it quite difficult to string words together in linear sentences. “You..but you...you live in a _hovel_.”

Blaine's chin came up. “I choose to live there, for I can afford it with my own income and not relying on my father's largesse. My father, by the by, is the peer, not myself. Baron Liskeard.”

His knees were too weak to hold him up much longer. Kurt dropped into a nearby chair. “I absolutely do not understand.”

With a sigh, Blaine came to kneel beside him and take his hands. “My father is Baron Liskeard. We've lived in Cornwall for many generations, serving England since...well, that isn't important. Or at the very least, I do not care. I am the second son; my elder brother Cooper will inherit the title, should he ever cease being 'Theodore Rothesay, dashing star of the stage.'” He sighed, while Kurt gaped in astonishment.

“Your brother is -” 

“I shall explain another time, I think. It's all...I have what you might call a rather complicated family, Kurt.” Blaine's crooked smile was rueful, as was the chuckle that fell from his lips. “The short explanation is that my father is not pleased with the choices that Cooper and I have made, and so he very frequently calls us down to the familial estate in Cornwall so that he may tell us so. That is why I have been home; he was very ill and wished again to impress upon us the importance of being children of the English peerage...”

“That is why you were gone when I tried to see you,” Kurt realized, with some relief. But he still remained quite confused. “But why did you never tell me? And what does your father mean about the choices you have made?”

Back down to the floor did Blaine's sheepish glance go. “In my career. I am a writer, Kurt. A poet. Which Father does not see as much more of a fitting occupation than acting.”

“You are a poet.” It felt as though his jaw might make a permanent art of being unhinged in shock. “You write. You aren't a destitute model.”

“No. Though I am a destitute _poet_. Not that I have spent a single penny of what you have paid me.” He looked up, an expression of fierce pride on his face. “Not one. You shall be getting all of it back, now that I have at last been able to tell you.”

Kurt was not entirely sure if Blaine's explanations were making him more or less confused. “But...but why?”

Pressing his lips together, Blaine tilted his head and appeared to be deep in thought for a long moment. “Well,” he replied at last, meeting Kurt's eyes directly, “I wanted to meet you.”

“You what?” Incredulous laughter burst out of Kurt before he could arrest it. “Me? Whatever do you mean?”

“I saw you, once. At Cremorne Gardens with Hunt and Rossetti and Millais. And you were...” Blaine shook his head, eyes going dreamy with recollection. “I think you still do not realize how captivating you are, even after all these months of me telling you, Kurt. But you are. You move with a grace unknown to most men, have the face of an angel and eyes that reflect Heaven in a single glance...to see you under the gaslamps that night, I was quite lost in that moment, and knew that I must know you.”

“No.”

“I assure you, yes.” Now Blaine smiled, squeezing Kurt's hand more tightly and dropping a kiss on the back of it before he continued. “But I was...I was too nervous to approach you. I was so very far gone that I was quite certain I could make nothing but a fool of myself. And so I said nothing, simply went back to my rooms and dreamed of you for days.”

Definitely more confused, Kurt decided. “What has that to do with you modeling?”

“Do you not see?” Gaze bright with delight and his smile sweetly mischievous, Blaine was clearly pleased with himself. “Modeling, Kurt, was just my excuse to spend time with you.” 

“But you were Hunt's model!” Confusion and joy were serving only to give Kurt quite the massive headache.

“I found out that you were Rossetti's protégé. So I plucked up all of my courage and offered to model for him, thinking I would in that way be able to get close to you. It seemed a clever plan.” He shrugged. “Alas, Gabriel did not need a male model. Hunt, however did. It was less than ideal, but it was still something of a link to you, and I thought perhaps I could work it out as I went along.”

Comprehension at last began to weakly dawn. “Rossetti knew.”

“Mm. No, I did not tell him -”

“But he did, he knew!” Kurt bounced up to his feet, wanting to both cry and laugh. This could all have worked out so very miserably had Rossetti been wrong about Blaine. “He knew, and I don't know how but I am quite convinced he's half-demon, not Italian – he knew, somehow he knew that you...that you were like me. And I still haven't any idea how he knew about me! But he knew, and he helped to bring us together...”

Blaine remained still in his kneeling position by the chair Kurt had just left, looking quite puzzled. “He knew?”

“He knew. Rossetti knew. Rossetti is responsible for our meeting.” Kurt stared at Blaine, still not quite believing it. “He sent me to Hunt's studio that day, under the pretext of collecting funds.”

Now understanding was blooming on Blaine's handsome features. “Hunt must have known as well. He must have fired me on purpose.” He began to laugh uproariously. “We have two of the most unlikely and unattractive Cupids in the history of love, I think.”

“Hey!” Rossetti shouted from outside the classroom door, only to be shushed by a sharp hiss from Lizzie. Kurt joined Blaine in his laughter, the two of them nearly bent double in their mirth. 

At last, the laughter faded and Kurt felt able to breathe in deeply and speak once more. “It could have all gone so horribly wrong, and yet...” Happiness felt as though it would burst from his very soul. “And yet it ended up being so entirely right. Except that we nearly wrecked it completely. Blaine, truly now, _why_ did you never tell me all of this?”

“I'm not sure,” Blaine admitted, looking guilty. “At first it seemed a lark, this masquerade. Then it went on too long – I quite underestimated the time it would take to create an oil painting! I did not know how to bring it up, and felt so awful taking your money...” He sighed. “And then after a time I thought perhaps you only wanted me around because I had ended up being a competent model, and because I was teaching you the ways of lovemaking. I hoped you would see that I was falling in love with you, but it felt as if you never would.”

Kurt shook his head with remorse. “And I thought you were simply staying with me for the income. I hoped you would say that you did love me, but couldn't believe I would ever be worthy of it from you.”

“You _are_ worthy. More than worthy. Kurt...” Blaine got to his feet, taking a deep breath and extracting a small journal from his pocket, stepping over to hand it to Kurt. “All those hours I posed for you, I was composing poems to you. Trying to think of ways to tell you how I felt. I've written them here. For you.”

Kurt's breath caught in his throat as he untied the leather thong that held the journal shut, letting the thin pages slip through his fingers. “ _There is a moment_ ,” he read, voice trembling as he took in the words, “ _when one says to himself, oh, there you are..._ ” He looked up at Blaine, wonder swelling his heart near to bursting. “Truly?”

“I was waiting for the artist to see love, and you were waiting for the writer to tell you that it existed.” Determination on his face, Blaine reached out and dragged Kurt into another molten kiss that made a thousand promises Kurt quite intended to make sure they both kept. “And now I have, and shall never stop. I won't chance losing you again, not after everything the world has apparently gone through to put us together despite our hamfisted fumblings.” 

“Nor I you. God, I have indeed been a fool.” Kurt shook his head. “I did not know what I was doing. I still do not quite know.”

Blaine smiled, running his fingers along Kurt's hairline at his temple “Well. They do say practice makes perfect, do they not?” His smile went thoroughly wicked as he pressed up on his toes to whisper into Kurt's ear. “In fact, I can think of many things we can practice together...”

Kurt felt his eyes widen with intrigue and arousal as he took in the litany of acts and vows that Blaine's heated whisper was reciting. “Why, to do all of those things would take a lifetime.”

“Indeed. Indeed they would.” Blaine had never looked more delighted with himself, and Kurt felt quite entirely the same. They needed to get back to his studio straightaway.

Just then, the classroom door opened, and Rossetti peered in, mingled tolerance and irritation on his face. “I am not unattractive, thank you very much. For that, the two of you can stand me drinks at Cremorne Gardens tonight.”

“No, not tonight, Gabriel.” Kurt linked his hand in Blaine's and smiled broadly at his beloved, never wishing to take his eyes off of him again. He dug a coin from his pocket and tossed it to his mentor without looking. “We've got practicing to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My eternal gratitude to my covey of betas for their invaluable help on this monster, which got quite out of my control and went on much longer than intended. Thanks also to all those who read and especially those who took the time to provide feedback - my love to you for sticking with me through to the bitter (or really...not so very bitter) end!


End file.
